


The Gift

by ELG



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Child Abuse, M/M, Rape, Stargate SG-1 AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-18
Updated: 2013-03-18
Packaged: 2017-12-05 16:13:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 117,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/725251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ELG/pseuds/ELG
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a different universe Jack O'Neill left Special Ops to join the police force and is now a Detective Sergeant in the Chicago PD. Doctor Daniel Jackson is heir to the Ballard millions but a virtual prisoner in his luxurious home, a victim of psychosis and depression. Is he truly as mentally ill as his medical records suggest or a victim of the controlling behavior of his stepbrother, Tony Ballard-Green? Who, if not her husband, killed Sha’re, the beautiful Egyptian maid? Why do Colonel Makepeace and Captain Carter of the very modern Air Force need Daniel Jackson’s help so urgently with transcribing an Ancient Egyptian inscription from a dead Pharaoh’s tomb? And who is the mysterious ‘gardener’, Ray Teal, and why is he really at Gray Gables?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> WARNINGS: Includes Non Con, violence, murder, rape, and references to child abuse (aged twelve and over)
> 
> SPOILERS: AU but could be said to contain spoilers for the Stargate Movie and 4.13 The Curse. It is a completely different universe however, although it does have a few things in common with the Stargate universe we know.
> 
> NOTE: The intention of this fic is not to take away from Daniel’s achievement in being the person who opened the Stargate but I’ve always assumed that some of the things Daniel worked out in the Movie, were already known to the people who were working on the project. It was already set up to dial out, for instance, and they seemed to know it was a means of transporting people across space. What didn’t seem to be known was what the symbol for Earth was or how the symbols to get home again could be calculated from the destination once reached. For that reason only, in this story, Sam and McKay explain some of the astrophysics which Daniel explained in the original Movie.

##### Prologue

The pains were coming quickly now and the backache had turned into a lower body numbness that, if she hadn’t known better, she would have thought was a sign of something terminal. On the wall the unfaded golden eye of Thoth looked down upon her and her swollen belly.

Doctor Claire Jackson felt the sweat pour down her skin in company with the pain. And it was true that she had never known a pain like it, each contraction feeling as if she was being ground against shale. Like a shipwreck taking place within her.

She concentrated on the golden eye of Thoth and tried to clear her mind, thinking what she wanted for this child. To be born safely, of course. To be loved. But that didn’t need to be wished for. She had never seen herself as the Victorian heroine type who would expire in childbirth. She had every intention of giving birth to a healthy baby and getting back to this dig at the first possible opportunity. And there was no question that she would love him or her. So, what did she want for this son or daughter whose expulsion was tearing through her body with such force? Closing her eyes she whispered in her mind to Thoth and asked him to grant her son or daughter the gift of communication, to understand the written and the spoken word of the past and present. To comprehend the speech of the ancient scribes, to see the truth in every kind of script, to find a means to communicate where others perhaps could not. 

And then the baby was coming so fast and with such determination that there was no room for any more thought. Only the pain, and then the wet head, the squirming shoulders, the wriggling wet infant, and the tears in her eyes as she held her baby son in her arms and kissed the miraculous perfection of his fingers over and over again.

***

##### ONE

Daniel woke and the smoke of his dreams dissolved into birdsong and a thin crack of sunlight trying to slice its way into the bedroom through the black velvet drapes. He lay still for a moment, relishing the clouded clarity of these first waking moments, cobwebbed with dream memories but not yet muffled by medication. He reached for his glasses from the nightstand and as he put them on his mind sharpened another degree. It was difficult to keep your thoughts clear when your vision was a blur. Today, he was going to be thirty, which meant it was thirty years since he’d arrived, a little early, in the desert mystery of Egypt, born in the darkness of a Pharaoh’s tomb to a mother who had kept on sketching hieroglyphs until the last possible moment. The surprised wail of a newborn baby had caused his father, working in a different tomb at the time, to drop the skull of a slave girl he’d been examining. It had cracked on the stone. Eight years later it was his parents’ skulls that had been shattered when a cover stone had crushed them. There had been mutterings of a curse. 

His parents had weaved such bright dreams for his future in their minds and none of them had involved money, or even love, but the dust of dead Pharaohs and the script of dead scribes. Had a fairy godmother been available to bless him they would have asked for him the gift of languages and the eyes to see what others could not. Perhaps his mother – as his grandfather had always told him – had asked some blessing from Thoth as he watched over her son’s birth. If it had been asked for, it had certainly been given: letters after his name and titles before it, papers published, digs completed, theories formulated, but so many other things had been taken away.

Daniel switched on the bedside lamp and looked around his room. It was too big for comfort, like everything about this mausoleum of a house. The marble floors were cold, the paneling too perfect to disturb. At night, phantom breezes made the chandeliers tinkle sadly, and he would feel melancholy sweep through him to the rhythm of their lament. His aunt Zinnia – who was not his aunt or a blood relation of any kind yet who made him call her that anyway – had insisted the house had to be restored with all due sympathy for the period. Daniel could understand her reverence for the past. He just wished the period had not demanded so much chill marble and velvet and gilt and sunless bronze. 

The floor of his room was made from dark-stained boards, and creaked authentically. He thought sometimes of a modern apartment with cream walls and a honey-colored pine floor, where the ceiling wasn’t painted with dingy cherubs and the lighting didn’t gleam drearily from dusty chandeliers. Or of a house somewhere with French doors to a yard of friendly proportions, some decking, and perhaps a back bedroom from which it was possible to see the stars.

His walls had been painted a blue so dark they looked black as a starless night sky. Many of his artifacts were barely visible against the somber background, African masks only visible as an unnerving semi-reflection in the darkness, clay tablets almost lost against the flapping of some tapestry that made his asthma threaten another attack. Although the room was supposedly his and almost everything in it was a much-loved heirloom left to him by his dead parents or his murdered grandfather, he was always aware of what this suite of rooms truly was: his bedroom and his ‘sitting’ room and his bathroom, in all their oak paneled, marble-tiled, velvet draped luxury, a penthouse prison in a house he hated. He would have preferred almost any room in any concrete apartment block where the key to his door was kept on the inside and the windows were unbarred.

His pills were on the nightstand next to a glass and a bottle of Evian water. Lots of pills. Red pills, yellow pills, green-and-white pills, and blue pills. Even a few of the green ones that didn’t mix well with others, a bit like him really. One could build the model for half a DNA molecule out of them or a pattern of the solar system. He wondered if they were made up in those enticing colors to try to make them appear more palatable. If so, it didn’t work, because he simultaneously hated his dependence on them and the way they made him feel: muffled and clouded and as if someone had wrapped a blanket around his brain. Of course, they stopped the horrors too, stopped the ghosts and the visions and the writing on his skin and the corpses who sat on the end of his bed and dripped blood onto the comforter, but they also made him drowsy and compliant and it so difficult for him to concentrate. The way he felt right now, he could research a paper, read a book and fully understand it without having to go over and over the same paragraph looking at words he’d seen a hundred times before and wondering why their meaning seemed so elusive, once he swallowed the pills that luxury was lost. Then he remembered some of the visions he’d had that had sent him scuttling under the bed, too afraid even to scream, remembered the antiseptic smell of the asylum – everything so white, and his fear a ghost that held his hand in a clammy paw and whispered horror in his ear. 

It was genetic, of course. His grandfather had gone insane, before he’d been bludgeoned to death in a pool of his own blood. Daniel had inherited the madness from him along with all that money.

Daniel shivered. He was afraid of the money. It was the King’s ankus with the power to corrupt anyone who touched it. In another universe he suspected he was too poor to bother with and as a consequence happier and free to come and go as he pleased. He had always known, although it was never spoken of, that Aunt Zinnia would never have taken him in if he hadn’t been Nick’s sole heir. In another world she would have thrown the letter from social services onto the fire and gone back to cooing over her only son. Only in this world, he hoped, had Daniel’s potential wealth made him worthy of adoption. 

Nick’s younger brother, Paul, had been happily married for many years to a woman called Rosemary but after her death had insisted on marrying again, much too fast, a woman younger than him and recently divorced. The marriage had never been happy, but, still, at the time of his death, Zinnia had been his wife and Uncle Paul had left his widow comfortably off. Within two months of her husband’s death, Zinnia had married again.

Daniel couldn’t think of Tony without wincing. The handsomest man in Chicago, Aunt Zinnia always called her son, just like his father. Tony’s father had been a tennis coach to women of advancing years but attractive incomes. Nick had always said Zinnia was a fool to marry him but that there was no fool like an old fool. Although Nick’s words had proven prophetic and the tennis coach had quickly absconded with a younger and wealthier widow, Zinnia had not been inclined to forgive her brother-in-law for his words. They had quarreled and Nick had left her nothing of his dead wife’s fortune, yet Zinnia and Tony – for the mother did nothing without consulting the son – had adopted Daniel all the same. There was no actual blood tie but there was a distant connection and no one else had wanted him. He reminded himself of that often when Tony was prowling like a cat on the lookout for an injured mouse. They hadn’t had to take him in. He could have been sent to the orphanage when his grandfather had committed himself to the asylum, could have washed their hands of him forever after Nick had been killed by that burglar. Yet, try as he might to feel grateful, it didn’t come naturally where Tony and Zinnia were concerned. For Nick, though, the gratitude was unforced. His will had been full of stipulations about Daniel’s trust fund and how he had to go to college. Even then Zinnia had made faint murmurs about Daniel being too mentally fragile, prone to nightmares and fancies, but the lawyers had insisted and Daniel had been, if not free, at least given a very long leash.

If his mother had asked of that painted Thoth on the tomb wall for her son to get his doctorate in archaeology, it had been granted, as had a separate PhD in linguistics and another in anthropology. Daniel was widely accepted as someone brilliant in his chosen fields. Unfortunately, he was also widely accepted as insane. 

 

As he brushed his teeth, he missed Sha’re. Maids never stayed for long. Too much work, perhaps, or maybe Tony left bruises on their arms also. He wished she hadn’t left, whatever her reason had been, she’d been one genuinely friendly face for him to look at in the mornings, and the fact it was such a beautiful face probably hadn’t hurt either. He wished at least that before she left she had come to say goodbye. Perhaps the kiss had made it awkward, although it had been a very chaste kiss. She had been crying again and he’d wanted to comfort her as she’d comforted him through the last episode of winged creatures sliding down the drapes. He’d meant to kiss her forehead but she’d pulled him down and their lips had touched, so briefly, like a child’s kiss, although his mouth had tingled with it for hours afterwards. She was a married woman, even if the marriage was in trouble, disagreements about a child she wanted and her husband didn’t, poisoning everything. It had been such a pleasure to be able to speak Egyptian to someone again after so many years of only hearing English snapped at him or purred in soothing tones.

He ran the faucet for a long time to wash away the toothpaste and the blood and then shaved first before he showered – wincing a little as the water stung those small circles of seared flesh – and then went back into his bedroom to get dressed. It was automatic to press the keyboard of his sleeping computer. He liked the way it came back to life so silently, light out of darkness, color from blackness, then it opened to him: his window onto the world.

Time slipped from him as he read the latest papers from conferences he could no longer attend, mentally blessing the Internet for giving him a means to keep one tentative toe in the water of current archaeology. No one seemed to have followed up on his research since that disastrous lecture he had given. Steven had told him once that no one would ever be interested in reading a detective novel where the murderer was never revealed. It wasn’t enough to say who hadn’t built the pyramids, he needed to reveal who had, but there was no data to support that. Those strange inscriptions were intriguing but they were just more pieces for the puzzle, more clues he couldn’t follow up because he couldn’t – 

“Why aren’t you dressed?”

Daniel jumped as Tony asked the question, wrapping his arms around himself at once, abruptly aware of the way he was wearing only a towel around his waist. There was mockery in that question, of course, because getting dressed was something that Tony didn’t allow him to do. But he usually made sure he was wearing underwear, pajamas and a robe by this time of the day, three layers between his tender body and the outside world, or more honestly, between his tender body and the man who had bruised it last. He hadn’t heard Tony come in. He never did hear Tony, despite the creaking floorboards, and not just because the man moved like a panther, so much controlled power there, those muscles rippling under his golden skin, but because Daniel was always too wrapped up in the dust of the pyramids, the lost warmth of Egypt and those strange hieroglyphs whose meaning he didn’t understand. Too abruptly he was back in his dark draped bedroom uncomfortably trapped inside his own skin. He could feel the dampness of the towel, feel how fine his wrists were, the heated areas on his skin he tried to ignore. Setting his jaw he said, “You could knock.”

“I could.” Tony’s fingers dug into his shoulder. “But I wouldn’t hold your breath.”

Zinnia was right, of course. Tony was certainly the best-looking man in Chicago, if not the whole of North America. Six foot three with slate blue eyes and dark brown hair, broad shouldered and frighteningly fit with a six pack stomach and pectorals a Greek athlete would have envied. He was perfect. On the outside anyway.

Daniel pulled away from him as if Tony’s was a hand that easily shaken off but the grip just tightened.

“We may have visitors today.”

Daniel darted him a look of surprise. Visitors weren’t allowed. That was the house rule and it was for his sake, that was what they told him. He was too crazy, flaky, and certifiable to talk to anyone else. Strangers would lock him up as soon as look at him. 

“Why?”

Tony glowered at him but he refused to flinch. His parents had told him that was a good question and he was going to keep asking it, even if it did occasionally give Tony that red mist in front of his eyes.

“If they ask you about Sha’re, you don’t know anything.”

Daniel blinked in confusion. “But I do. I know where her father and her brother live. She told me.”

Tony smacked him around the back of the head with the heel of his hand and it rung dully. Daniel felt the resentment flare at the injustice. Tony had always been older and stronger than he was but that didn’t make it right for him to hit him, only possible.

“I won’t lie,” he muttered.

Tony’s eyes were very cold. “Do you want to go back to White Towers? Do you want to wear a strait jacket and a diaper and have to lick baby food from the end of a spoon?”

“It was only because of Nick.” Daniel bowed his head in shame because he hadn’t taken the loss of his grandfather well. He’d gibbered uselessly and sobbed inconsolably and seen things that weren’t there and made Tony so angry that stars had exploded in both their minds.

“It was because you were and are a stupid, fucked up weirdo with shit for brains. Did you take your fucking medication this morning or did you forget as usual?”

“I don’t like it. It makes everything…unreal.” Daniel braced himself for another blow but the warm hand on his thigh was worse. He jumped and shuddered. “Don’t.”

There had been a time, in Egypt, when it was Tony who had seemed unreal and impossible. Daniel had known himself to be free then, Tony a bad memory left behind. He was a doctor of archaeology. He had a career and a life of his own. The boy whose grandfather had been too insane to understand when he tried to tell him the true reason he didn’t like living with Aunt Zinnia had seemed like someone else. Working in the sunlight on the ruins of a dead pharaoh’s scattered dreams of the afterlife, Daniel had felt the calluses on his fingers, seen the lean muscle on his sunbrowned arms, and known he would never be that person again – never be powerless. He was an adult male with a responsibility to those weaker than himself not to abuse the power being an adult male gave him, he could not be a victim, that was the lot of women and children and his role now was to offer such potential victims his protection. Orphaned little boys and skinny teenagers with scraped knees might have to suffer at the hands of bullying stepbrothers but never adult males.

He pulled away from Tony’s hand. “I said ‘don’t’.” 

They looked at one another for a long moment, Tony’s eyes lazy with confidence, both of them remembering all his past victories.

Tony was too strong to evade for long, Daniel had found that out years ago and relearned it many times since in struggles he had always lost. His grip was like iron and it would take so much force to subdue him that it would leave them both fragmented. There was a bronze statue on the table. It was one of the many beautiful things Nick had left him. One blow and he would be free of Tony forever, but he couldn’t do it. He knew what a smashed skull looked like, the white hair ugly with drying blood, gray matter leaked out taking all memories with it, turned someone warm and living into something cold and dead. He couldn’t do that to anyone, not even Tony at his worst. His hands began to shake just at the thought. 

Tony smiled. “Time for me to give you your birthday present.”

Daniel wrapped his arms around himself, wishing he were dressed, wishing the door was open, wishing there was somewhere to run to except miles of echoing dark corridors that Tony controlled. “I don’t want it.”

No snake could strike faster than Tony could move. The hand shot out and fastened around his wrist, yanking him off balance and pulling him against the solid wall of his hardened body. “Don’t be ungrateful, you little shit.”

He struggled and a hand fastened around his throat. He knew this dance too well, remembered the steps – Tony’s heels on his bare toes, those hands that could always find new ways to hurt, fingers that pinched and bruised and squeezed and stabbed. Every time this happened he told himself that struggling was futile, and panicking absurd, and every time he panicked because the world was going dark for him, stars exploding behind his eyes. He hit out blindly, telling himself as he struggled and punched that he was six foot tall and thirty years old and that meant he couldn’t be a victim, that this time he would win. Pain stung his face, bruised his body, then fingers tightened around his throat and the darkness covered him like a shroud.

 

Gray Gables. A grim name for a grim place. He had been expecting Oak Park but this area wasn't much less 'desirable' in realtor speak although it certainly was a lot less Frank Lloyd Wright. This was more like Glessner House, only less cozy and welcoming. The heat was sweltering, a blast furnace of a day but there was nothing summery about this mausoleum. Detective Jack O'Neill looked up at the house and thought he had never seen anything so damned depressing, it was a huge square building with any number of steep roofs. The amount of rooms it must contain boggled his mind, hell to keep clean no doubt, and built facing north. Some of those many windows looked as if they never saw the sun. The gardens were still being meticulously restored to their former formality, all dingy statues, dusty shrubberies, and spraying fountains. Even the pool, when he passed it, looked as if it was only for show, never to be enjoyed. He caught a glimpse of the gardener through the trees – a big black guy with an athlete’s build. For a moment their eyes met and O'Neill felt himself assessed, stripped bare, like passing through an X-ray machine en route for a government building. Brown eyes bored into him and then something clicked behind them, like a roulette ball falling onto the number bet on last. He had never been made for a cop so fast before. Then the gardener was turning away and going back to whatever he was doing with that rake and O'Neill was left wondering what the hell that was about.

He exchanged a glance with his partner Charlie Kawalsky, who was also looking at the gardener. Kawalsky knew him pretty well by now and murmured, “You take the house, I take the grounds?”

O'Neill nodded. What neither of them had admitted aloud was that O'Neill wasn’t good at being in company these days, even the company of his partner and friend, someone who had known the wife who’d left him and the son he’d lost. He was too raw and too angry and too damaged for anyone to want to be around him right now. His wife hadn’t understood that sometimes the only way forward was silence, but Kawalsky did. There was nothing the man could have said to him that wouldn’t have made him angry, no benefit in dragging out the darkness inside of him and examining it in the light. A good friend knew when it was time to take a step back and that was what Kawalsky had done. One day O'Neill might even get around to telling him he appreciated it.

The maid who answered the door looked Hispanic and didn’t seem to speak a lot of English, trying to tell him there were no visitors today until he showed her his badge, that at least she recognized and her eyes widened.

“Just tell Mrs Green I’m here, would you? Thank you.” He gave her his best reassuring smile but she still looked flustered as she hurried away. 

Zinnia Green was so thin he wasn’t sure she was actually visible if she turned sideways. Her narrow pointed face had been lifted, expertly no doubt, but the effect was still grotesque, the ghastly immobility of her waxy features cadaver-like under its painted-on color. The reddish hair sprayed into a question mark helmet added to the general effect that he was talking to a walking corpse. She had to be seventy if she was a day, but she was striving hard for thirty-five and scaring the hell out of him in the process.

O'Neill introduced himself and asked for confirmation of who she was. 

“That’s Mrs Ballard-Green,” she corrected at once and he made the alteration without comment.

She had shown a flicker of animation, or at least irritation, at the way her surname had lost a barrel, but when he mentioned the name of the dead maid, Zinnia Ballard-Green’s face didn’t flicker. Perhaps with her chin hooked behind her ears it wasn’t easy for her to do so but he noticed the look of weariness that washed over her face when he said the magic word ‘murdered’. She said, “The servants are so tiresome. None of them speak English these days.”

It was on the tip of O'Neill’s tongue to say that no, they probably didn’t, not if you wanted them to work sixteen hour days for third world pay, then you tended to have to employ illegal immigrants. Heroically, he conquered the urge and asked her politely for a list of all the inhabitants of her house.

“Is there a problem, Detective?”

Relief washed over Zinnia’s face at the smoky timbre of this newcomer’s voice. “My son, Anthony. He can deal with this. You can deal with this, can’t you, darling?”

O'Neill turned to find a tall dark-eyed man in the doorway. He was impeccably dressed although his near-black hair still looked damp from the shower. Aged about thirty-five. Intelligence yet to be determined. O'Neill waited for Zinnia to introduce him and when she didn’t said, “Detective Jack O'Neill. And you are…?”

“Tony Ballard-Green.” There was a hint of impatience in the man’s voice. “What’s the problem?”

“One of the maids has gotten herself murdered.” Zinnia’s tone suggested the girl had done it just to spite her. 

Tony looked down his nose at O'Neill. “Don’t you people usually travel in pairs? Where’s your partner, Detective? I didn’t think we had a Dunkin’ Donuts in this part of town.”

O'Neill kept his face blandly unreadable. He had elevated passive resistance to an art form and took a particular pleasure in being as polite as possible to the most unlikable people. “He’s talking to your gardener. We were trying to get a list of everyone in the house on the day in question.”

“I’m sure one of the servants could tell you that better than I can. Let me send for the house keeper.” Tony had an affected drawl with a slight imprecision over the placing of the vowels, faux Bostonian with a hint of insecurity. He looked nothing like his mother – supposing she was his mother, for he had the dangerous air of a kept younger man, frustrated power without responsibility. O'Neill wondered if Zinnia controlled the purse strings, if Tony was on a leash that was soon liable to snap.

Talk of servants and housekeepers made him wonder if he had wandered into an Agatha Christie. Even as an avid reader of detective novels, he would have to say he had found his everyday existence in the police force bore a much closer resemblance to Joseph Wambaugh than Edgar Wallace. He tended to find more bodies in dumpsters than drawing rooms. He sometimes got sick of the grit and wind of Chicago, wondering what had possessed him to move to this part of the country, wondering if he wouldn’t have done better to get a transfer out of this city as well as out of his wife’s house – as if grief was something that could be deposited in a grave and left behind. 

While they waited for the housekeeper he asked them about Sha’re. Both of them seemed to have trouble placing her although Zinnia offered that she thought she was a pretty girl. Tony shrugged as if he hadn’t noticed. Asked if they had ever heard anything about disagreements with her husband, Zinnia looked mildly affronted that he could accuse her of knowing anything about her servants’ private lives. Asked about their movements, Zinnia was maddeningly vague. Even though O'Neill was convinced the woman probably never did anything except shop, attend coffee mornings with her equally vapid friends, and then shop some more, she pressed a finger to her lips and a hand to her head while she thought, as if the effort of making her brain work was physically painful. He wondered if it was healthy to have so much contempt for a fellow human being who had never done him any harm. He remembered his grandfather telling him that was always the risk when you came back from a war – that you would despise the people around you who hadn’t seen the things you had been forced to see. You looked for proof in their eyes of some splinters of horror left there, and when you didn’t find it, you turned away in barely concealed disgust. 

In contrast to his mother, Tony was clipped and economical, with words, and for all O'Neill knew, the truth as well: “Breakfast at nine, the gym at ten, tennis at eleven, a business lunch at twelve – that ran late. I had to run into town for a few things. You can check my credit card statement for details if you need confirmation of what I bought. I dined at my club. I was back here by nine. It was the servants’ night off, but my mother can confirm when I got back.”

Zinnia nodded at once while O'Neill made notes and polite noises, thinking all the while that all the earlier activities were irrelevant as Sha’re had been killed in the evening, which meant Tony’s only alibi was his mother.

The housekeeper was plump, Hispanic, and earnest. He wondered if she was really called ‘Maria’ or if that was what Zinnia Ballard-Green had decided she was called because it was easy to pronounce. It was clear that she took her job seriously. O'Neill wondered what pride you got in making the lives run smoothly of people who had no worth. Then he wondered who he was to denote who was and who wasn’t of worth. He made a list of the names she gave him. Not an American name amongst them, or perhaps everything was an American name, given the melting pot of the forced and fled who had emigrated here to create this sprawling mass of contradictory ideals. Thou shalt not kill. Except in the states that considered themselves the most God-fearing, and there one shalt kill with impunity, especially if the defendant is black, mentally subnormal, or could only afford a public defender. No one said ‘shalt’ any more, did they? Perhaps they never had. Perhaps God was a poor grammarian and had never learnt to conjugate his past participles properly. What was a past participle anyway? 

His mind ran on while his fingers took notes and his mouth asked intelligent questions. He felt too often these days that all he did from dawn to dusk was give a good approximation of sanity – an act he performed for an unappreciative audience who had no idea of the effort it cost him.

“So, this is a complete list of everyone in the house on the day in question?” 

Maria nodded. “Yes.” Another glance at the list then a darted look at Tony.

O'Neill saw the uncertainty and gave her his most charming smile. “Have I missed someone?”

She responded to the warmth in his eyes. “Doctor Jackson. He is also here on the day. He is here all the time.” The glance she darted at Tony then was slightly defiant, slightly triumphant, slightly fearful.

“He’s an invalid.” Tony shrugged. “I didn’t think he was relevant.”

Relevant? O'Neill wondered idly what an irrelevant life looked like. “I’d like to see him all the same. If that’s not going to inconvenience anyone? Is he well enough to answer a few questions?” 

Tony gave him a slow assessing look. He’d been mildly irritating until now, O'Neill got the impression he had abruptly become more annoying and more interesting, like a snake this man wasn’t long going to be able to avoid poking with a stick. Tony picked up the phone on the table, a reproduction from some era when telephones were decorative as well as useful and pressed one button. His fingers drummed as he waited with the receiver to his ear, saying in his slightly affected drawl: “He’s mentally incapacitated, not physically. He can answer any questions you like. Whether he will or not is an entirely different matter. He’s very stubborn.”

Zinnia was fluttering slightly, slight movements of tiny wrists suggesting agitation. “My nephew had a breakdown. He has to be kept calm. We try to keep the house quiet for him to avoid…episodes. My late brother-in-law was never mentally very well and unfortunately his grandson inherited the same…instability.”

At last, an interesting wrinkle, someone un-stereotypical to talk to. He wondered if the mentally unstable Doctor Jackson drooled, cursed, threw things or was simply obsessive about the size of the food he ate, the way he passed through a door. Or dangerous. So far the strangling of Sha’re Farouk was looking as straightforward as any case could be. She and her husband had quarreled in recent months. The husband was shifty, evasive, admitted to unreasoning fits of jealousy, admitted he was afraid she had been planning to leave him and that he had been reading all her letters from her father and brother which had suggested that she did so, admitted the brother had been going to visit next week with a possible intention of taking her back to live with him and his father. The father and brother had confirmed they had never really cared for her husband, and had been worried about Sha’re for some time. The husband was hardly a big bruiser, quite delicate in his good looks, in fact, and seemed to be genuinely grief-stricken, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t strength enough to strangle a ninety pound woman. In such cases it invariably was the husband who had committed the crime, and O'Neill thought it was probably the case here. Zinnia and Tony Ballard-Green were annoying and superficial, but that didn’t make them murderers

Tony was speaking rapidly into the telephone, tone clipped, irritation barely disguised: “There’s a detective here to talk to you about that maid who went missing. No, you’d better come down. Make sure you’re dressed.” He didn’t wait for the person on the other end to answer, replacing the receiver as soon as the last words were out of his mouth.

Zinnia twittered some more – hard to tell if she was apologizing for her son’s brusqueness by emphasizing the mysterious Doctor Jackson’s mental instability or trying to prepare O'Neill for the newcomer so he wouldn’t take offence or jump to the wrong conclusion.

“As long as he takes his medication he’s quite well,” she insisted as if O'Neill had somehow questioned it.

O'Neill gave her his most reassuring smile. “And if he doesn’t take his medication?”

Tony took a cigarette from an antique silver case and placed it between his lips. “One way trip to the loony bin.”

“Darling…” 

O'Neill wasn’t sure if Zinnia was objecting to her son’s words or actions, but the way he hissed with annoyance and placed the cigarette back in its case suggested the latter. O'Neill persisted quietly: “If Doctor Jackson fails to take his medication, how does his particular form of mental instability manifest itself?” 

“He sees things that aren’t there,” Zinnia sighed. “Ghosts and dead people and the like.”

O'Neill resisted the urge to point out that using ‘ghosts’ and ‘dead people’ in the same sentence could be considered tautology. Perhaps she was being less careless with her words than he imagined, perhaps she meant that he saw corpses and saw ectoplasm. “Just delusional then? Not violent?”

Tony glanced up at him with no particular interest. “He killed his dog once. Stabbed it. Didn’t remember doing it, just woke up with it dead on the bed next to him and the knife in his hand. We had to lock him up for a while after that. But that was years ago.”

“He was just a child then,” Zinnia protested. 

O'Neill couldn’t work out if she was so eager to defend the Jackson character because she was fond of him or because she disliked any hint of melodrama being attached to her family.

“He was fifteen.” Tony looked up and sighed in irritation. “About time. Where are your shoes?”

O'Neill also looked up and through the open doorway saw across the marble hall to a sweeping marble staircase down which a young man was descending, barefoot, and dressed in pale clothing, his head haloed with light brown hair which a shaft of sunlight from a high window somewhere was turning to gold. He was dressed in an old pair of tennis pants, their whiteness faded to a dusty cream, like paper left in the sun, and a thick white cotton shirt three sizes too big for him, which revealed a glimpse of smooth bare chest and as he jumped down the last stair slipped off his left shoulder, exposing the furrow of his collar bone. Glancing across at Tony Ballard-Green, O'Neill guessed the clothes had probably been his once. He noticed that the pants were held up by a length of knotted string that looked as if it had once been used to tie a parcel. 

Tony looked at the approaching Jackson without any discernible patience. “Shoes?”

Jackson returned Tony’s gaze without rancor, an odd stillness about him that tantalized an old memory in O'Neill’s subconscious: a tactician used to losing battles yet doggedly stubborn in refusing to submit. “I prefer them with laces.”

O'Neill found himself looking at the string around Jackson’s waist, noticing that Zinnia and Tony were both looking at it also. Jackson stroked the fraying end with nervous defiance and O'Neill noticed how fine his wrist bone was. Physically, Jackson was an odd mixture of an athlete’s build narrowed and thinned by an invalid’s demeanor, a combination of resilience and delicacy that was oddly beguiling, vulnerable as the tangle of a child’s hair. O'Neill looked at his bare feet and they were long and elegant, perfectly shaped. The nervous fingers matched them, tapering to a piano player’s sensitive point. The face too warred between handsome and pretty, oversized blue eyes with long lashes set beneath strong brows and in sockets stained purplish from lack of sleep, a slightly girlish mouth, too perfect for absolute masculinity nevertheless fringed by a smattering of very male stubble. It occurred to O'Neill that what you got when prettiness and handsomeness combined was beauty, he was looking at something beautiful, albeit crumpled, winter pale, and mentally unstable.

Tony reached for the string and there seemed to O'Neill to be nothing protective in that movement, just exasperation, a regulation flouted too obviously to ignore. Jackson caught his wrist, movement swift, and held Tony’s dark blue gaze. “My pants will fall down.”

There was a moment when Tony seemed to make some motion, stifled almost at birth by a strangled plea from Zinnia and his own self-control, yet redolent of savagery, like the jerk of a cannon just before it fired. Then he stood with his arms by his sides, breathing lightly. O'Neill imagined the inhalations licking around the edge of a red rage, although his face was impassive, indifferent. He shrugged. “Hang yourself then. Just speak to the inspector first.” He turned away and O'Neill wondered if he had been doing him a terrible injustice, if he was worn ragged from wrestling with an unstable psyche, fighting delusions that threatened to claim someone he cared for. He had seen the parents of anorexics reach this place of stoic endurance, trying to find a way to hate the ailment when would-be murderer and potential victim were both a person that they loved. 

Seen in that light, Jackson’s blank expression appeared heartless, but the look he turned on O'Neill was very different, wary yet not hostile, assessing him before essaying a tentative smile, like a child given leave to accept sweets from a visitor. He said, “Have you contacted her father? Sha’re was thinking she might go to stay with Kasuf. I may have his address somewhere.”

“She’s dead,” Tony told him brusquely. “Strangled then dumped in an alleyway.”

Watching Jackson’s reaction, O'Neill thought that if he was acting his shock and dismay he was Oscar-worthy. Or amnesiac, of course. If Jackson had done this he certainly didn’t remember doing so and his grief seemed genuine. Unlike Tony or Zinnia, he was evidently truly upset.

“But, how…? Why…? She was such a gentle person.”

He, at least, certainly seemed to know who the girl was, and as more than an indistinctly remembered face, to Jackson she had apparently been a ‘person’.

O'Neill found himself taking his arm, as he would have done with a younger brother or old friend. “Let’s go outside. Get some fresh air.”

As he led him towards the front door he was aware of that stifled motion from Tony again, an action suppressed, leaving behind a carbine whiff of anger in the air. A servant hurried to open the door, and he felt the young man beside him flinch from the daylight, blinking rapidly as the overcast sky was reflected in his eyes. The sun had gone, although the heat was still oppressive. The sky looked bruised, yellowing, sullen with unspent rain, the clouds an angry gray, while the atmosphere crackled with the foretaste of lightning, air thick with expectation of a storm. 

Jackson breathed deeply, broad chest sucking in the air as if it had been starved for some time. Looking down in surprise, O'Neill realized Jackson had laced his fingers through O'Neill’s and was gripping him so tightly it hurt. He was like someone with vertigo on a balcony in a thunderstorm and it occurred to O'Neill belatedly that he was probably an agoraphobic – that would explain the prison pallor, the lack of shoes, the uncoordinated clothing. He said, “Do you want to go back inside?”

“No.” Jackson snatched another nervous breath. “Not the house. Maybe the shed…” The blue eyes were beseeching and his free hand flickered those long elegant fingers in the direction of a moldering outbuilding in which O'Neill imagined wheelbarrows might be kept.

“Somewhere with a roof?” O'Neill enquired, not unsympathetically.

“Yes.” Jackson snatched another breath before daring a glance at the sky. “It’s low today and…wide.”

“And gray.” O'Neill felt the first fat drop land on his arm. Jackson’s snatched breath warmed his cheek and O'Neill felt a faint crackle of electricity. “Let’s get undercover.”

Jackson needed no encouragement. Despite the raked gravel beneath his bare feet he ran lightly for the dilapidated building, his fingers never once slackening their grip on O'Neill’s hand. There was nothing proprietorial in his grip, nor threatening, it reminded O'Neill rather of the way the friends of his dead son had always trusted him so unquestioningly when he was the one doing the school or little league run, children thinking themselves adults yet still innocent at heart. Remembering Charlie, he laced his fingers more comfortably through Jackson’s and pulled him away from a towering tree that might attract lightning and down the cinder path to the derelict shed.

 

The sound of the rain on the roof was thunderous, it torrented down the outside of the grimy panes, further muffling the outside world and unbalancing two of the senses. Inside, the shed smelt of beaten earth and compost, of neglect and slow decay. Jackson sat on a rickety chair, wrapping his bare feet around the legs of it hard enough for the wood to leave an imprint against his bony ankles. It was dark enough for dusk although O'Neill’s watch insisted it was only ten in the morning. He could see the flickerlight of the raindrops slanting into the swimming pool, dancing on the surface upon which a cigarette pack was floating.

“What do you want to know?”

He turned to look at Jackson who was eerily pale in the dim light. His skin had an unlined look, like a child’s, but the purplish shadows under his eyes made him look more like an addict.

O'Neill leaned against a work surface on which old flowerpots waited to be filled with soil and seed, the process of growth and rebirth still continuing all around in heartless profusion, even here in this grimy gloom, new blooms being conjured whose scent the Ballard-Greens would probably never even notice, whose colors they would barely see. As clearly as though it was still in front of him, O'Neill saw the bare footprint his son had left in the flowerbed in the house back in Chicago. The footprint he had covered with a bucket, as if it was something at the scene of a crime, in the hope of preserving some part of Charlie even though the rest of him was lost. 

_We keep him alive in our minds, Jack. In our hearts and memories. He’s still alive in here._ Sara touching her heart and reaching across to touch his, O'Neill stepping back because he couldn’t bear anyone to touch him now, not even her. He didn’t know if it was because their touch was painful to him or because he feared the dark hollow inside him could be contagious in some way. Had he been protecting himself or Sara when he shut her out? He still didn’t know. 

“Are you okay…?”

His response to concern was instinctive now, a flare of rage. _Don’t touch me!_ He looked at his feet to hide the anger in his eyes before looking at Jackson again. The anger died then and as his eyes adjusted to the gloom and the battering of his other sense from the sound of the storm, he noticed the dark marks across the pale throat. He watched as Jackson swallowed, a motion at his neck. Bruises. Had Jackson tried to hang himself? To throttle himself? Or had someone does this to him? Sha’re perhaps? 

Voice steady, O'Neill said, “Tell me about yourself.”

Jackson shrugged as if it was no more than he expected and spoke without emotion: “I was born in Egypt. When I was eight my parents were killed. My grandfather took me in and I lived with him until I was twelve when he committed himself to a mental institute. Aunt Zinnia took me in.” A muscle flickered in his jaw. “When I was fifteen I had a kind of breakdown and I was admitted to a mental institute as well. When I was sixteen I went to college.”

“That’s very young,” O'Neill interjected.

Jackson gave him a flicker of a smile. “Well, I’m very smart.”

O'Neill looked at the bare feet, now dusty with cinders, the piece of string around the oversized pants. “If you say so.”

Instead of appearing affronted, Jackson darted him a quick surprised grin. “I got my first doctorate at the age of twenty-one, the other two at twenty three and twenty five.”

“What are you?” 

Some might have called it a cosmic question and there was a brief acknowledgement in Jackson’s eyes that he could easily have strayed into philosophy had he wanted to be annoying. Evidently he didn’t, as his answer was straightforward: “I’m an archaeologist, specifically an Egyptologist and a linguist. I study ancient languages and civilizations.”

“You like dead stuff then?” O'Neill liked to be crass on occasion, just as he liked to be sophisticated on occasion. When everyone in your family was smarter than you were sometimes the only thing you could do was keep them guessing about exactly how much you knew. Show your workings, the math tests had always said. He preferred to keep his workings hidden, yet sometimes a part of him wanted them to be glimpsed all the same.

“You could say that.” Jackson’s glance was unexpectedly penetrating. “Dead languages written on the walls of the tombs of dead pharaohs generally do it for me.”

O'Neill had lost track on which one of them was setting the tone of this conversation, for a while he’d been sure it was him but he was starting to suspect it might be Jackson. He decided to return to the formality of interrogator and interrogated. “After you got all those qualifications, what then?”

Jackson seemed unfazed by the sidestep back into the routine of question and answer. “In between working on my doctorates, I spent time in Egypt doing fieldwork and lecturing in college. When I was twenty-six my grandfather was murdered. I found the body. I had another breakdown. I was admitted to a mental institute again and stayed there for a year. Since then I’ve lived with Aunt Zinnia and Tony.” The jaw clench again around the name ‘Tony’ although the expression was bland apart from that, determinedly so, for Jackson seemed to have a naturally expressive face.

O'Neill took out his cigarettes. “Are you dangerous?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did you kill Sha’re Farouk?”

Jackson blinked in surprise. “Um, no. I’m sure I didn’t. Am I a suspect?” He seemed more intrigued by the idea than affronted.

“Everyone’s a suspect.” O'Neill lit his cigarette. “I’m naturally suspicious.”

“Only the dead are innocent?” Jackson pressed.

O'Neill’s hand trembled almost imperceptibly on his zippo and then he summoned the flame and made the end flare, that orange glow before the nicotine fix hit home in a satisfying coil of death-bringing smoke. Every inhalation another step closer to oblivion. No wonder he loved Lady Nicotine. “Sometimes not even them.” Another drag of smoke into his lungs and he could exhale. “How did your parents die?”

“They were killed in an accident at a museum. They were setting up an exhibit – a cover stone – the chain snapped and they were crushed to death.” Jackson’s face flickered then, almost imperceptible but O'Neill saw it and realized then what the younger man wasn’t telling him.

“You were there.” Not a question.

“Yes.”

“And you saw everything.”

Jackson looked right at him, defiance and reproach a perfect balance in his oversized blue eyes. “Yes.” His gaze seemed to say: What are you that another’s pain can give you pleasure? What did this to you? 

Abruptly ashamed, O'Neill looked away first. “I’m sorry.”

He glanced back in time to see Jackson’s eyes flicker in surprise. “It was a long time ago. I was lucky to have my grandfather to take me in. I could have been sent to an orphanage.”

He was probably right but O'Neill disliked the patness of it, recycled platitudes parroted back at him by someone who now believed they were original thought. Why should anyone who had lost someone they loved have to count his blessings? Have to take on the responsibility for his own grief so that no one else should be burdened with it? Who had decided it just wasn’t sporting to rage at the unfairness of death? People said they worried you were bottling it up, internalizing everything, but it was what they wanted and expected. You weren’t truly meant to rage against the dying of another’s light. 

“Tell me about Sha’re.”

Jackson’s expression was soft. “She was very kind, a very gentle person.”

“What happened to your neck?”

Jackson blinked at him in confusion. “What?”

“You have bruises on your neck.”

The younger man looked at for a long moment, eyes slightly narrowed, then said conversationally, “And you want to know if Sha’re left them there while she was fighting me off as I strangled her?”

“Kind of an open and shut case for me if she did.” O'Neill took another drag on his cigarette.

Jackson was looking pissed with him now and something sparked inside him, a reaction, a faint flicker of a flame he’d thought dead, it was the way he’d felt in the past when one of too many children of clever, busy parents, he couldn’t be as smart as Eric or Gillian, or cute like Beth, or artistic like Ben, but he could be annoying enough that they couldn’t ignore him. 

“You wouldn’t be so blasé about it if you’d met her.” Jackson unwrapped his feet from the legs of the wooden chair. “Why did you become a policeman in the first place if it doesn’t bother you when people get murdered?”

“Oh, but it does.” O'Neill ignored the ice cocoon in which he’d been wrapped recently, his chrysalis of numbness. “It bothers me a lot. How did you get the bruises?”

“Tony and I had a fight.” Jackson threw the words at him defiantly, but there was that flicker in his cheek again, a tensing of his jaw. “Brothers fight sometimes. It happens.” There was a hesitation before ‘brothers’. Jackson had tried the word out cautiously, like someone with no French making his way through an haute cuisine menu.

“I thought you were cousins?”

“His mother was married to my grandfather’s brother. Does that make him a wicked uncle?”

“Is he wicked?” O'Neill smiled as he said it but he knew it went nowhere near his eyes.

Jackson looked away, that muscle flickering in his cheek again. “I told you, we don’t get along. That’s all.”

“Does it happen often? The bruising?” He kept the enquiry casual, as if it didn’t matter, as if he was too full of weary cynicism to believe anyone any more, certainly as if he didn’t hold a moral position on people of Tony’s size and musculature fighting with people of Jackson’s mental health.

Jackson shrugged. He had a stubborn jaw. The mouth was definitely a little on the pretty side, the full lower lip the kind that invited you to bite it, but the jaw and cheekbone were chiseled, classically handsome, undeniably masculine even without their light dusting of stubble. “We fight sometimes. We always have.”

O'Neill noticed the way Jackson’s fists were clenched so tightly his knuckles were white. Jackson steadied his breathing deliberately, as if it was an exercise he had been taught, then unclenched his fingers slowly, spreading them like a piano player about to play a tune – a relaxation technique. Another steadying breath then Jackson spoke quietly in his unexpectedly deep voice, “We get on each other’s nerves. It’s nothing serious.” 

O'Neill wondered which one of them Jackson was trying to convince and felt a sudden impulse to be a knight on a white charger again – to save someone. 

Abruptly, Jackson said, “Life’s so precious, isn’t it? Every life I mean? All that effort that goes into giving birth. And babies are so fragile. All that energy exerted into keeping them breathing in and out and all the time anything could intervene. A falling tree, a swerving car, someone whose brain chemistry isn’t quite right.” He snatched a breath. “Sha’re wanted children. She said she wanted to listen to their heartbeat at night, hear it ticking in the darkness like a clock that would never stop.”

O'Neill was too cold to move, his bones turned to salt. Thunder rumbled overhead and lightning flickered listlessly, a brief whiplash of silver that turned Jackson’s skin moonlit pale. 

The lightning had exposed him too – when he looked back at Jackson he saw his mouth was open and his eyes wide with comprehension. For a miraculous second O'Neill saw tears in his blue eyes. Jackson said softly, “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

He still couldn’t move or speak. It was terrible, this paralysis, when it happened. Everything went numb and he would wonder if this time it was death. A tingling that spread along his arm then up his face, jaw locked in immobility, throat frozen. It took every ounce of effort he had to put the cigarette to his lips and inhale, but his fingers were shaking. Grief was a faithful dog that stalked him and when he sat down it laid its head upon his lap. Perhaps in its way it even loved him. They spent enough time together.

“It happened this morning.” Jackson abruptly pulled up the shirt that didn’t fit to reveal a ribcage decorated with bruises and O'Neill understood and appreciated the gesture. Jackson had accidentally broken open a half-healed wound, seared him, stumbled on his secret, and now he wanted to make amends by displaying his own scars, making himself equally vulnerable. O'Neill didn’t know if he cared though. He could still see his son’s footprint in the flowerbed, the rawness of black letters on a white headstone. 

“It was nothing to do with Sha’re but it’s okay if you don’t believe me.”

O'Neill blinked and the immobility passed. He looked at Jackson’s bare torso and something flickered inside him again, a brief flame of anger. Then he looked at Jackson’s face for confirmation of what he’d known he’d find there. It felt strangely fitting that there was neither shame nor that furtive pride of those who delight in being victims. Jackson didn’t even know how strange it was. He had wandered too far from reality for too long. He had lost his grip on the normality of others because his own normality had become too removed. 

He moved closer and Jackson waited with a strange kind of trust, again reminding him of his son’s friends, only when O'Neill was standing over him and Jackson realized O'Neill was bigger than he was did he look a little uncertain, but then it passed and he was passive, displaying himself for inspection. O'Neill’s role was to be objective, non-judgmental. To nod perhaps and make the occasional note. O'Neill touched Jackson’s throat and the younger man turned his head obligingly so he could see the bruises more easily, exactly as if O'Neill was his doctor and had a right to this impersonal examination. Being institutionalized had certainly left its mark. 

O'Neill could see where the thumbs had dug into the skin, pressure applied to the carotid artery, the red marks already darkening to purple. There were matching marks on Jackson’s wrists, although those had a faded gilt gleam – as if someone had spilled saffron on his skin. The marks on his ribs were red and yellow and purple, heat was still radiating from them and when O'Neill placed his hand upon them he could feel it, oddly comforting against his chilled skin. The imprint of a man’s boot sole was unmistakable – he could see the fine detail of the tread. When he looked back at Jackson, there was uncertainty in the blue eyes, and Jackson abruptly pulled his shirt back down. “I shouldn’t have shown you.”

“I have to take you in for questioning.”

“What?” Jackson darted him a look of surprise as the shirt fell over his narrow hips to reach halfway down his thighs. His wrists were so fine, that line of his collar bone so vulnerable, yet his chest was broad, with plenty of heartroom, like a racehorse. 

O'Neill didn’t meet his gaze. “A girl who works here was strangled. You show clear signs of having recently been involved in a struggle. I have to take you in and get the evidence photographed before it fades. I’d be deficient in my duties if I didn’t.”

“Oh.” Jackson looked obscurely relieved and O'Neill thought his faith in the criminal justice system was touching. Jackson knew he hadn’t killed Sha’re so he thought he had nothing to fear, and this meant a trip away from the house. O'Neill suspected Jackson was rarely allowed out of the house.

“Can you cope with a car journey without medical supervision?” He took a kind of twisted pleasure in the small cruelty of referring to Jackson’s mental illness so baldly, refusing to adhere to the social niceties with this guy despite having stuck to them so rigidly with the Ballard-Greens. Cowardly bullying perhaps because Jackson was clearly a powerless person who wouldn’t think to complain and he felt like kicking someone, and yet it didn’t feel as if it was coming from a place of hostility, more like a test he was performing, wanting to see how Jackson reacted.

Jackson blinked again. He had long eyelashes, again, a little pretty for a guy, as were the big blue eyes, although the overall effect was certainly more pleasing than not, but definitely not someone to leave in a holding cell with any persistent offenders. 

“I’m not agoraphobic.” He looked out at the sullen light of the passing storm, the livid sky. “I’d just forgotten. How…”

“Wide the sky is?” O'Neill finished expressionlessly.

Jackson nodded. “There are more stars in Egypt.”

“No.” O'Neill tossed his cigarette onto the dirt floor and trod on it. “Just less light pollution. Shall we go?”

“Okay.” The flicker of something he glimpsed in Jackson’s eyes looked more like excitement than apprehension, like a kid playing hooky from school. “I mean I don’t have any choice, do I?” 

Definitely, like a kid skipping class. No real sense of proportion, the way children were. He remembered Charlie and his friends thinking aloud it would be good to find a dead body on the way to school as it would get them out of that math test. Sara had been horrified by their callousness. O'Neill had delivered the obligatory lecture then taken them to school in the station wagon. But he’d understood how big the small things became when your life consisted of them. Adults had no idea how high a math test could loom for an eight year old – a monolith towering over the landscape of life – to those boys the cost of a human life had seemed a reasonable equivalent. 

But when he looked at Jackson he didn’t see any lack of compassion in his eyes. Jackson said, “Sha’re loved her husband. She said that he wrote poetry. She said in Egypt he was a teacher. Over here, she said, we never see the value in any language but our own.”

O'Neill said, “Movies with subtitles suck. Europe is full of dust and dirt and warm beer. And nothing and no one would ever get me to go back to the Middle East.”

Jackson sighed as if O'Neill’s crassness somehow reflected badly on him. O'Neill wondered in what way Jackson was accepting responsibility for him, as a fellow American, or just as someone male and breathing. Did he see the whole of the human race as something he was connected to? If so that ruled out Asperger’s. He couldn’t be one of those brilliant autistic kids who knew everything about the way chemicals reacted and mathematics unfolded but didn’t understand what a smile meant or the value of a tear. Sara had once said grimly that she thought every man on the planet had some degree of Asperger’s. It was such a short step for men to take to reach autism, she would observe. Anyone with a y chromosome was already halfway there. 

O'Neill opened the door of the shed, it creaked and more cobwebs tore resentfully. He smiled at Jackson, a bright false smile, as if he was family and they had quarreled, as if they had the kind of intimacy that made it acceptable to argue and tease. “Shall we go?”

“Okay.” Jackson was pretending fake enthusiasm to hide what looked like a genuine flicker of excitement.

O'Neill held open the door for him. “You really don’t get out much, do you?”

Jackson gave him a seraphic smile, like someone floating past calmly in the serene lane of life. “Are you going to put the siren on?”

“I’m not arresting you. You’re just helping us with our enquiries.” He thought he ought to try to sound more like a policeman. 

“That’s nice of me, isn’t it?” Jackson ducked out into the rain and shook back his hair. It hadn’t been cut very well, undecided as to what style it was meant to be in, an urchin cut with uneven bangs that zig-zagged across his forehead. He tried to tuck it behind his ear but it was too short. O'Neill wondered when it had been cut. He watched the rain spattering on Jackson’s glasses. 

“You’re over twenty-one, right?” He felt that he should inform the people in the house, but after all if Jackson was an adult, did the Ballard-Greens really need to know?

Jackson darted him a reproachful look that was, O'Neill had to admit, kind of cute. “I’m thirty today.” 

O'Neill opened the back door for him. “Happy Birthday.”

Another smile, mocking both of them. “Thank you.” 

As Kawalsky came up carrying a notebook whose pages looked thoroughly sodden, he cast an enquiring look at Jackson. O'Neill said, “He wanted a ride in a police car. It’s his birthday.”

Kawalsky had used to be quicker than this, or perhaps O'Neill had just been an unpredictable stranger for too long. His face suggested that he feared his partner had finally lost it. “What?”

O'Neill sighed. Oddly enough, communication had been easier with Jackson, they could both move sideways in the same elliptical patterns, like juggling with words. He tossed a non sequitur to Jackson and Jackson tossed it straight back. Perhaps only the mentally incapacitated now felt at one with him. “He’s helping us with our enquiries.”

Jackson leant forward and said helpfully, “Sha’re talked to me more than anyone else. I’m the only person in the house who can speak Egyptian so I’m probably the best person to ask about her anyway.”

He didn’t explain the ‘anyway’. O'Neill thought about trying to do so and then realized it was too complicated: the bruises and the white charger impulse and the way Jackson hadn’t seemed to want to go back to the house nothing to do with the official reason – which was that Jackson’s injuries made him a suspect.

“And I liked her,” Jackson added with more emphasis. For the first time O'Neill saw some anger in his eyes. “I think it’s important the people who care about her try to find out what happened, don’t you?”

Kawalsky gave O'Neill a look of confusion and O'Neill carefully didn’t make eye contact, getting into the car to avoid an explanation. He looked in the rearview mirror and saw Jackson studying him intently. When he realized O'Neill had noticed, a faint hint of color tinged his cheeks. O'Neill said, “Fasten your seatbelt.” 

He was shocked by the speed with which Jackson snatched at the belt, thinking for a moment that what appeared to be uncharacteristic obedience must have been beaten into him by Tony until he realized it was a response to a wrongful assumption. He winced. Jackson was too empathetic by half and horribly vulnerable to other people’s pain. Emotional blackmail would be a cakewalk with this guy. O'Neill almost said, “My son didn’t die in a car crash” but Kawalsky was getting into the car now so he held his tongue. Jackson snapped the seat belt shut and sat back like someone trying to be good. Kawalsky darted O'Neill an anxious glance, trying to work out if he really had lost it.

O'Neill said quietly, “Doctor Jackson has some bruising that may or may not be relevant to this case. He’s agreed to an examination by a police doctor and for the injuries to be photographed for future reference.”

It was almost a relief when Tony rapped angrily on the window. O'Neill let the glass wind down slowly, still enjoying small acts of unpleasantness like letting a Ballard-Green get spat on by the rain for two whole seconds longer than was strictly necessary. 

“What are you doing? Where are you taking him?”

On an impulse he couldn’t have explained, O'Neill said, “Sha’re left some papers we need translated. We need Doctor Jackson’s expertise as an Egyptologist.”

Kawalsky managed to freeze his features into a determinedly blank expression, although his eyes still betrayed a glimmer of astonishment he wasn’t quite fast enough to conceal, but Jackson’s jaw dropped in obvious confusion. Not a natural poker player, clearly. In some surprise, O'Neill realized he was enjoying himself. 

Tony’s lip curled. “You couldn’t find an Egyptologist who was sane?”

O'Neill tapped his fingers gently on the steering wheel and looked straight ahead. “We’re very grateful to Doctor Jackson for agreeing to help us out in this matter.”

Tony lowered his head to look into the back of the car. Jackson had his mouth closed now, O'Neill was glad to notice, and was frowning a little in a scholarly way. As O'Neill watched, Jackson used the edge of his shirt to clean his glasses while not meeting Tony’s eye. He looked serious and professional and old enough to order a drink without being carded. Still not looking at the dark-haired man, he said, “I won’t be long.”

“You’d better not be.” 

O'Neill waited for Tony to move out of the way and when it become apparent he wasn’t going to, eased the car past him with perfect politeness and absolute precision even though spitting gravel from the drive onto his shins could have been accomplished so easily. 

Jackson watched Tony in the rearview mirror and only when they turned the corner of the drive said, “Now he’s really pissed.” He sounded neither pleased nor concerned, just assessing. O'Neill thought he recognized a fellow traveler along the road of stubbornness. Some people’s behavior could be modified by outside influences. Some were so fixed in who they were they might as well have been set with quick drying cement. He’d never got why men beat their wives but he got an inkling of it now, perhaps they were looking for the proof they’d made an impression, for proof of their own existence in the bruises reflected on another’s skin. He suspected Jackson was a past master at making Ballard-Green disappear. Perhaps the guy had started hitting him for the same reason O'Neill had acted out when he was a teenager and his younger brother was always getting better grades, just trying to remind everyone he was still around.

Kawalsky looked to O'Neill for an explanation, his eyes asking expressively if Jackson was a suspect or an assistant, if he needed a lawyer or his rights read to him, if O'Neill knew what he was doing. O'Neill didn’t really have an answer to any of those questions. He suspected he was dangerously out of control, a mind-slip away from playing chicken with oncoming traffic or Russian roulette with a loaded revolver. He heard the gunshot again, heard his own heartbeat hammering as he ran up the stairs, opened the door to that terrifyingly rapid stream of warm blood. Closing his eyes tightly for a moment, he gripped the steering wheel until his fingers hurt. Kawalsky and Jackson both sat there in perfect silence, and he became aware of them breathing shallowly, trying not to impinge on his moment of piercing grief. Their breathing had unconsciously found the same rhythm and he listened to it curiously. It was oddly soothing. He waited for a car to go past, an elderly woman driving it who looked petrified inside her own skin, face set, eyes dead, he wondered if she too had lost a child, if everywhere around him other people’s tragedies were rolling past unnoticed, then pulled out with great care. Kawalsky and Jackson both exhaled again, and he became aware of their relief. They had probably made eye contact while they waited for him to recover his composure, a connection made. 

He could snuff them both out in an instant. His mind was hanging by a thread as fine as one strand of a child’s blood-soaked hair and yet he carried a loaded gun and a badge that gave him permission to use it. One twist of the wheel and they were all annihilated and the white noise of grief in his head would finally be silenced. But as he drove he reminded himself that he could die alone without involving them, and that the true reason men became murderers was not for money or love or jealousy but because they wanted to play god, and therefore as an atheist he should deny himself a license to kill.

He thought of that Peckinpah film set on the Russian front, with desperate German soldiers bayoneted in their dugouts, the army officer saying ‘I think God’s a sadist and He doesn’t even know it’. Except even that suggested a plan of some kind, whereas he believed now it was just chaos, events random and inexplicable. Did it matter if a girl had been strangled, probably by her husband, for some squalid little reason, and that he would rot in prison for the next twenty years, and her father would weep and her brother would weep, and in the end everyone would die, as they would have died anyway if the murder had never taken place? He could still remember why it mattered, intellectually, but he couldn’t feel it any more. Something in his heart had stopped working, an emotional bypass. Almost panicking, he snatched another glance in the rearview mirror and saw Jackson studying him intently, a frown on his face as if he had been following every thought and disapproved. In his blue eyes O'Neill thought he saw the certainty that he had lost.

Jackson said, “It was her life and no one had the right to steal it. Whoever killed Sha’re took her future from her when it wasn’t theirs to take.”

Then he could feel it again and the relief was excruciating. Just a flicker of the old emotion, but at least it was still there beneath the permafrost. He tried to smile but his face had forgotten the motions, still he saw Jackson nod. 

Kawalsky said, “We’ll get the bastard, don’t you worry.” There was no doubt in his voice. As he drove them all to the station O'Neill played the words over and over in his head like a favorite record and found in them a thin core of comfort.

***

It had been interesting at first, almost embarrassingly so, the car ride and everything he could see out of the windows, and then the police station, and the bustle and noise and color of it all. O'Neill was right to say he didn’t get out very often. But it had become too much very quickly and now he was poised on the very edge of an uncomfortable chair with all his flight instincts engaged and only a fear of looking foolish stopping him from running. He had pills to calm his nerves as well as pills to send him to sleep or stop him crying in corners or seeing bloodstains on the pillow and his dead dog’s glassy eye. He’d surreptitiously taken what was supposed to be one of the blue ones in the car when he felt his pulse getting jumpy and started to snatch his breaths. Panic attacks felt scarily like heart attacks, there was the same breathlessness, the same nauseated feeling. When they went past a certain point they were unstoppable so he’d fumbled for a pill and swallowed it dry. Only then, when he’d checked his cache of them, sticky in his palm, had he realized he’d taken a green one by accident and that was why the colors outside the car were smearing like a child’s painting left out in the rain, and why, when they reached the station all the sounds had been too loud and slightly out of key.

Daniel took a nervous sip of coffee. It was almost cold. O'Neill had left him in a room full of desks and noise and other policemen, asking him politely to stay there until he got back. Daniel had watched O'Neill walk all the way down the length of the long room and felt bereft when he passed out of sight. That was when this had begun to seem less like an interesting change from his usual routine and more like a bad idea that was going to stretch his nerves thinner than piano wire, not to mention make Tony mad as hell. He still told himself it was an act of triumph to make Tony totally lose it, chalk up another score for Passive Aggressives R Us, but the truth was it was occasionally frightening and invariably painful. 

He was here because he’d wanted to stay with O'Neill a little longer. He hoped it was the pills that were making him feel so removed from reality because he was ashamed of the way he kept forgetting Sha’re was really dead. It was difficult to grasp because the last time he’d seen her she’d been very much alive and possibly even pregnant at last so it was natural to still think of her that way. It was different for O'Neill, he’d presumably seen the body. And then Daniel thought of Sha’re lying naked on a slab somewhere, her skin discolored by death, and how cold that must be, quite apart from the coldness of being dead, and found the sadness and anger were strong enough to blot out even the babble of noise around him and the slightly streaky faces of people viewed through the filter of the wrong kind of pill.

He was sure it was a child O'Neill had lost. The man seemed to be stumbling around in a bitter haze of grief. He was possibly even more insane than Daniel was, and perhaps that was what had drawn Daniel to him so strongly – recognition of a fellow traveler. Something had certainly drawn him to the man because he hadn’t been able to stop himself gaping at him from that first meeting. He’d walked down the stairs and waited for his eye to go to Tony, the way it always did, but Tony had faded into the reproduction wallpaper, Zinnia had been a vague fluttering on the periphery of his vision, and all he could see was the stranger with his impossibly long legs, hypnotic brown eyes and his scar bisecting one eyebrow. He looked tough and fragile all at once, his body leanly athletic from his broad shoulders down to his narrow hips, but the look in his eyes had been raw with grief and compassion and an inexpressible sadness. Daniel had wanted to put his arms around him and tell him things would get better, and then he had wanted the man to do the same for him.

He felt comfortable with him and challenged by him and excited by him all at once, which he supposed was another way of describing romantic attraction, if that was what he was feeling. It had never occurred to him he might be attracted to a man. He’d assumed Tony would have killed any latent tendency on his part to look upon his own gender in that way. He knew what sex with men was like and he knew he didn’t like it, so having his heart go pitter patter because a tall handsome stranger strolled into his life seemed like a pointless exercise. Women had always seemed much safer, wiser, more comforting and more appealing to him. They had rounded curves where men had painful corners. Their voices were softer, their hands were gentler. There was a whole shopping list of things women not only didn’t do but couldn’t do that made them seem much pleasanter to be around. 

He thought of how soft Sarah’s mouth had been. She had the kind of tall slender beauty that had made him want to get down on his knees and worship her, although she only laughed when men tried to do that and told them they were absurd, a golden goddess, when she wore heels he had to look up to make eye contact, which, given his instinctive tendency to want to put her on a pedestal had seemed only fitting. Sarah shoving him up against a wall had been nothing like Tony doing it and her love bites had left very different bruises. He’d loved how spontaneous she was, how brave, the way she’d just wake up in the morning and decide she wanted to be on the other side of the world by evening and carry him along in her slipstream. Brilliant and funny and possibly a little crazy. She’d been as exciting as a shipwreck with all hands saved. Apparently she’d come to see him in the asylum but he didn’t remember. He’d imagined her visit many times since, the way she would have looked seeing him like that, the sound of her voice, the expression on her face, but it wasn’t a true memory, just a fantasy. For all he knew she may have cried but it was a lost memory for him, along with all the other lost memories from that time. He wished the way Nick had looked with his skull fractured had been lost with them.

“Would you come this way, Doctor Jackson?”

Daniel started in surprise. He hadn’t seen O'Neill come back. The man was just there, a tangible warmth close at hand. His face was in focus in any case. There were those eyes again. He had thick black eyelashes and straight brows. His hair was a mixture of different colors under the fluorescent tubing, brown with lighter streaks where the sun had got into it and then the delicate gleam of the occasional silver strand. Daniel wondered if O'Neill was forty yet. He looked as if he could be forty. His face wasn’t really lined, but it looked as if a lot of life had passed in front of it, a lot of sunlight fallen on it. It was the kind of face you could look at over and over again and still see something new in it, some nuance you’d missed, some flicker of expression that told you how he would look when he was eighty, how he’d looked when he was a kid banging a tea tray against a chair leg just to get attention. 

“How many pills did you take?”

Daniel obediently opened his hand to show the way his palm was streaked with different colored dye, the red pills now only pink, the blue ones eggshell pale, the white ones pinkish and bluish at the same time.

“I took a green one by accident. They don’t go with the yellow ones.”

O'Neill’s formality dissolved and he crouched down to bring himself level with Daniel’s eye-line, as if he was talking to a kid. Daniel had a close up of his eyes and they were certainly very brown and surprisingly warm for someone as crazy as he suspected O'Neill truly was. O'Neill held out a handkerchief, not a Kleenex, a real cotton one and said, “Why don’t you give them to me for now?”

Daniel obligingly turned his hand onto its side and watched the smeared pills patter onto the handkerchief, apart from one of the red ones that had stuck itself sweatily to his palm. O'Neill tapped that one gently to make it fall and it landed with the others. Daniel smiled and licked the dye from his palm, glancing across at O'Neill as he did it. When O'Neill beckoned to him, he followed, and thought nothing of it, despite the doctor’s offices, institute vans, and padded cells he’d been tricked into over the years. He followed O'Neill, keeping close by his left shoulder because, now he was up and walking, the trails were streaky as a windshield in the rain and the color and noise and motion of the people in the room was making his palms sweat and his head begin to buzz. But he liked the way O'Neill moved, all that controlled energy and defiance, like someone with a nail in his foot who refused to acknowledge it, and he liked the way his arms weren’t thick with muscle yet looked as if they were full of strength.

O'Neill was murmuring to him as they walked, as if he knew he needed some distraction as they passed all those desks where people were being interviewed and other people were doing paperwork or shouting to one another or slamming filing cabinets closed with a jarring crash of metal that scraped through his nerves. People looked up at them as they walked past and Daniel saw them notice his bare feet and the piece of string holding his pants up. What had seemed an interesting piece of defiance that morning now just seemed a little silly. He’d been determined not to appear downstairs in his pajamas so had grabbed these clothes from under the mattress where he kept them hidden. Except they didn’t fit, of course, and belts were denied to him – except as something Tony used as a weapon – in case he hanged himself. His shoes were all devoid of laces so he’d decided to go barefoot, and all in all the appearance he now presented had probably just reinforced Tony’s insistence that he wasn’t right in the head. O'Neill seemed to be explaining again about the doctor and how they would have to take some photographs and ask him a few questions. Something about a lawyer?

“No, I don’t want one.” Daniel was clear about that anyway. Lawyers were another of those many things that set Tony off and made Zinnia flutter ineffectually like a moth trying to influence a landslide. 

O'Neill looked at him in surprise and Daniel wondered if he’d misheard and just turned down some caffeine. If so that was definitely a mistake. “Unless you were offering me coffee,” he amended quickly. “In which case, yes I do. Want one, I mean.”

He couldn’t read O'Neill’s expression, but it seemed more gentle than not. The man said, “Three PhDs, eh?”

Daniel was determined not to let his mouth twitch. “Are you questioning my qualifications, Officer?”

“Detective.” O'Neill opened a door into an interview room. “And I wouldn’t dream of it. This is Doctor Fraiser, Doctor Jackson. She’ll be examining you.”

Daniel hadn’t expected the doctor to be a woman and felt suddenly shy. He tried to smile at her but was further disconcerted to see that she was young and pretty with huge dark eyes and the sort of figure it was hard not to look at even when she was wearing a white coat, especially as he was a lot taller than she was, making it almost impossible not to look down her front. He opened his mouth to say something intelligent but nothing came out even when she held out a hand and said, “Pleased to meet you.”

Daniel opened his mouth again but felt the chill of the linoleum against his bare feet and the tickle of the string against his crotch and realized he had done this to himself, arrived here as a patient instead of a colleague. He shook her hand but didn’t say anything, ducking his head so as not to meet her eye.

“He doesn’t get out much,” O'Neill explained to the doctor. Daniel felt a surprisingly gentle nudge against his shoulder from O'Neill. “Say hello to Doctor Fraiser. I promise you she doesn’t bite.”

“Hello,” Daniel murmured and wrapped his arms around himself for comfort. He felt like an idiot.

O'Neill seemed aware of his confusion and took his arm, steering him over to an examination bed, talking over his shoulder as he did so. “We need a photographic record of Doctor Jackson’s injuries.”

“Yes, you explained.” The petite doctor gave Daniel a smile, which she probably thought was reassuring, but he still felt absurdly shy. She really was extraordinarily pretty and it really was much too long since he’d been in a relationship. He remembered Sha’re kissing him, how soft her lips had been, the scent of her a brief intoxication before they both remembered she was married and pulled apart like naughty children. Thinking of Sha’re lying on that slab in the morgue or in a drawer somewhere, like something filed away until it could be solved, proved the only distraction he needed.

He winced as a penlight was shone in his eyes and as O'Neill made to leave the room gave the man a begging look, or possibly a panicked look of sheer terror. Either way it stopped him in his tracks. “I can stay,” O'Neill said reassuringly and then gave the doctor a look of enquiry, “Can’t I?”

“If you keep out of the way.” 

Daniel flinched from the flashlight of the camera. She took a lot of photographs of his neck, then used a measuring tape and wrote a lot of things down, then beckoned O'Neill over to consult with him. They both nodded a lot and put their hands on the table next to one another. O'Neill’s hands were surprisingly elegant, Fraiser’s small with a hint of clear varnish. Daniel looked at their fingers and realized Fraiser was explaining that her hand was the same size as Sha’re’s. When she put her fingers up to his throat, he didn’t flinch but he imagined her trying to fit her hand into the impression Tony had left, her fingers so pale and neatly rounded beside the ugly red smudges on his throat.

He felt a lot more inhibited about taking his shirt off in front of her than he did in front of O'Neill but he obeyed when she asked him to and then flinched from the flash of the camera again, tried not to react to her breath against his skin as she got in close to point things out to O'Neill. More photographs – there seemed to be dozens – his ribs, his back, his shoulders, his chest, then his arms, his wrists. 

Then they went outside, O'Neill saying something reassuring to him, a smile that didn’t go near his eyes which were suddenly full of anger, jaw so tightly clenched he could hardly get the words out. Daniel felt chilled as he sat on the examination bed, not sure if it was okay for him to put his shirt back on, his skin prickling with cold. What if there was something on his body that showed he had killed Sha’re after all? What if he was far crazier than he’d ever realized? What if when O'Neill came back in he looked at him the way men looked at murderers.

“…If he was someone with special needs we probably could, O'Neill, but as you’ve just said yourself the man has three doctorates. He can walk out of that house any time he wants to. The fact he chooses to stay…”

“Examine the rest of him. You said it yourself, if he was a child you’d be assuming…”

“But he isn’t a child. He’s thirty years old. Unless he chooses to lodge a complaint, it’s not our problem….”

“If it was a woman you’d want me to do something about it.”

“What makes you think I don’t want you to do something about this? But your hands are tied unless…”

He was surprised when it was O'Neill who came back into the room. He’d stopped listening to their conversation, doing simple math on the number of letters in each poster on the wall instead. One of them had twenty-seven letters and was divisible by nine as well as three, but the other had thirty-one and didn’t seem to be divisible by anything without some letters left over. He wondered if that meant thirty-one was a prime number or he was just really bad at math, and thought that if he was autistic, like O'Neill had initially seemed to think, he would have known that and probably the square root of the square mileage of the capital of Chile or something as well.

O'Neill said abruptly, “I want you to file a complaint against Anthony Ballard-Green for assault.”

Daniel gaped at him. “What?”

“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with your hearing.”

“No. Don’t be silly. Of course I won’t.” File a complaint? It was the most ridiculous thing he’d ever heard. Unsporting too. Like calling in the Fraud Squad to settle a family disagreement about a game of Monopoly.

“Why not?”

“Because it’s not like that.”

O'Neill picked up his shirt and held it out to him. “You have his boot marks on your ribcage.”

“I told you, we fought.”

“I don’t remember seeing any bruises on him.”

Daniel shrugged. “He’s better at it than I am.”

O'Neill picked up his wrist and Daniel winced at even that light pressure. O'Neill turned his arm over so the light picked up the sores on his skin. “Tell me this isn’t a cigarette burn?”

Daniel pulled his arm away. “Sha’re didn’t smoke so what business is that of yours? You said you wanted the doctor to photograph my injuries in case they were relevant to Sha’re’s murder. Are they relevant or not?”

“Domestic violence isn’t something I can just walk away from.”

“ ‘Domestic’?” Daniel stared at him in disbelief. “It’s not like that. We’re not…” He didn’t know how to phrase it. They were family members, not people in a relationship. The sex was incidental, no contract had ever been agreed between them that made them a couple and therefore gave them a template of behavior to which one or the other of them wasn’t conforming. They had inherited one another, through marriage and death, and they were stuck with one another, the way one was with relatives. He lit Tony’s blue touch paper in small retaliation for the other man’s power over him and Tony occasionally exploded. It was what they did. It was no one else’s business but theirs. “You don’t understand. It’s just…”

O'Neill gazed into his eyes and Daniel saw frustration and compassion and sorrow all fighting one another in their brown depths. “It’s just your life, isn’t it? It’s all you know.”

Daniel remembered Egypt and Tony receding to a name from which he barely flinched. The comradeship of the dig, his mind unclouded for what felt like the first time in years, the sun and the sand and the dust of the dead, with everything to learn and nothing to hide. Jokes and sex without bruises and sharing a joint and the excitement of uncovering buried truths. Being able to joke about his original breakdown, never dreaming another one waited for him just around the corner. He thought about that person and it was like looking at someone with his face in a home movie. He could remember how it had been to be that man, but he couldn’t now imagine how it felt. 

“I used to…” What could he say? I used to be normal once? 

“Come on.” O'Neill touched his shoulder, quite gently. “Let me take you home.”

They made the journey in silence, Daniel starting sentences in his head he couldn’t think of a way to finish. He felt defensive and miserable at the same time. He’d thought O'Neill understood the way things were but he apparently hadn’t gotten it at all. Tony was a prick sometimes, no question. Tony had a temper. Tony had done some things in the past for which, if someone had intervened at the time, he could probably have been arrested. Daniel could have been taken away, placed in a foster home, given a different kind of family in which to grow into adulthood, but that hadn’t happened and time had moved on, and whatever else he was, Tony was also his buffer between the mental institute and the outside world. Tony was the one who got him out of the asylum. Tony was the one who shouted at Zinnia when Zinnia tentatively suggested it might be better if Daniel went back. Tony was the one who knew his body so well that when an orderly had marked it, he’d recognized a bruise he hadn’t left himself and raised merry hell. Tony got him the medication – legally or not, Daniel had no idea – that meant he could live in his big dark room and function relatively undisturbed. And perhaps part of the reason why Tony had brought him home was because he enjoyed the games they’d been playing for so many years now, but anything was better than the asylum and the medication and the other patients rocking and wailing and screaming through the night. Perhaps Tony needed him, but Daniel needed Tony as well. The world was too big and the sky too high and too wide and the colors too bright and the noises too loud and the people too plentiful and unpredictable for him to manage without a place where he could hide. Unless someone was willing to take on the maddening burden that he represented the only place for someone like him was an asylum. Better even a boot mark on his ribcage that broke no bones and would quickly fade than the bright fake smile of the orderly bringing around his morning medication and the glint of sunlight on the needle of the sedative when he tried to tell visiting doctors he was really sane.

 

As he got ready for bed, Daniel found himself thinking about O'Neill. He knew he should be thinking about Sha’re but the loss of her hurt, a new wound on too many old wounds, whereas O'Neill was something pleasant to think about. For all the haunted sorrow in his eyes, there had been a strength in him and a kindness to which Daniel had found himself leaning, like a divining rod towards water. The question was how crazy Daniel had behaved around him. Had he managed to seem sane enough for O'Neill to bother with? Or was being crazy a better idea when the man was a policeman looking for a murderer? Did he really want to be perceived as a suspect in such a horrible crime just to have a few extra hours of O'Neill’s company? He hadn’t really come to that yet, had he? Had he?

Daniel had decided a long time ago that people could choose not to be victims. One could choose not to be let oneself be compartmentalized, refuse to wear the convenient label. One could be an orphan and escape banishment to an orphanage, see and hear things that weren’t there and choose not to spend the rest of one’s life in an asylum, one could even have an unorthodox relationship with one’s stepbrother and choose to sidestep the labels the world might try to pin on one as a consequence. If he thought of himself as a participant in some of Tony’s less savory practices it made him adventurous and precocious. If he thought of himself as someone to whom things had simply been done, he was nothing other than a victim. He rejected that version of events. Tony had made additions to his life experience which Daniel would not willingly have sought. That was another way of putting it he could live with. He wasn’t quite sure where the truth lay any more, it was too confused by the alcohol Tony had poured down his throat. When he thought about it for too long, he felt the panic flare of a situation overwhelming him, of someone climbing unbidden into his bed, supposedly for warmth or comfort, of their hot breath against his skin, their slurred whisper in his ear, their fingers….

Even now the memory had the power to make him stiffen with old resistance. Secret and sordid and never to be spoken of. The wetness of the sheets afterwards. The familiar ache of his unfamiliar body. But it was the only affection he ever received during that period of his life, the only time he was ever touched. Tony’s fingers bruised, it was true, but not always, sometimes they were gentle, sometimes Tony liked to just hold him and inhale the scent of his hair and touch him in a way that didn’t hurt, a slow caress across his heated skin, as if in his own twisted way Tony did care for him. It was hard to know what a drunken Tony was going to be: sentimental or angry, fond or brutal. The cocaine and the methamphetamines had made him horny in a way that refused to be denied, sometimes he took the time for something approximate to a seduction, sometimes just the quick fumble and jerk of near-instant release. 

Two unrelated boys at the age of experimentation test-driving their hormones together. That was the version he could live with. It didn’t matter if it was accurate or not. In that version he was granted a choice, a role as a participant, not just some whimpering vessel into which Tony shot his ever-ready load. Most of the time he’d just pretended to be asleep, which was acquiescence of a kind. He hadn’t shouted for help or taken a blunt instrument to bed with him. He’d climbed into bed with a mouth full of minty freshness and his pajamas wrapped around him securely, knowing very well that by the morning he would be tasting and smelling of Tony, his most tender places all too thoroughly explored. But he’d never said a word to anyone except Nick, who couldn’t or wouldn’t understand him. So perhaps he’d wanted it, been excited by it, been so grateful for any human contact with another warm body that the pain when Tony was clumsy and the bruises when Tony was having a bad drunk day had seemed a small price to pay. 

And at heart he was an anthropologist and to students of human behavior it was just another interesting case study. The way the older males had to display their dominance to reinforce their position as the alpha member of he pack, the way the younger males submitted passively either to escape the punishment resistance would bring them or because they too found some comfort in the rigid hierarchy they so swiftly came to recognize. In many ancient cultures it would have been accepted as a matter of course, the initiation of the younger boy by the older boy, just another bonding experience, just another rite of passage. What harm had it actually done him anyway? There had been no lasting physical injury. He’d contracted no disease. Suffered no true damage. What had actually been broken except a transitory social taboo of this era and this culture? 

He bowed his head and remembered Tony rubbing his stubble against his cheek, taking Daniel’s hand and putting it between his legs, making him touch what grew there, quick hot harsh breath against his face, Tony’s eyes wide open the whole time, holding his gaze, a tongue lapping at his lips, entering his mouth, the sour taste of tobacco and beer. The stifled grunting had always sounded ugly, the contrasting sounds he made stifled by a hand or the pillow or Tony’s shirt stuffed into his mouth. The aftermath could be almost pleasant. Tony touching him gently, licking his skin, wrapping himself around him as if he needed comfort now and Daniel’s warmth consoled him for the guilt that chilled him. The guilt and the rage came from the same place, both the bastard children of Tony’s uncontrolled libido. Tony would whisper to him harshly that he should just wait until he knew how it felt, then he’d understand why he had to, even though he’d promised last night would be the last time for at least a week, and stop that damned whimpering, he sounded like a girl, it didn’t hurt that much.

Daniel found he had his fists clenched and was having to wait for the ebb tide of rage to recede. Okay, not mutual experimentation then. He’d been pathetic and Tony had been selfish, and what difference did it make anyway when seventeen years later, there was still no way of stopping him? It was the way they were. It was their life, that was all, their relationship. Brothers without a drop of the same blood in their veins trapped in a cycle of abuse neither of them seemed to be able to break. The only power he had was the means to make Tony angry, that made every beating a triumph because it signaled the other man had lost control. From those red-gold sunsets in Egypt this was what his life had dwindled to, wearing his bruises like badges of honor and taunting his stepbrother with each cigarette burn on his skin. Sometimes he wondered who exactly was mind-fucking whom, and if he was the one who had done this to Tony rather than the other way around. One thing he had no doubt about was that if Detective O'Neill ever realized just how tawdry Daniel’s life truly was he’d wash his hands of him in disgust. From time to time even Daniel washed his hands of Daniel in disgust and then it was the white room and the soothing music and the pills, the pills, the pills.

***

He had the photographs spread out on his desk, the dead girl and the live man, both with their necklaces of bruises. Sha’re was sleeping downstairs in the morgue, the white-skinned, gray-lipped sleep of the unjustly dead. He had looked at her and thought about how many other corpses he’d looked at over the years, far too many of them women. It affected Kawalsky differently, as the loving husband to a wife, and father to a daughter, it made him all the more convinced that he was in the right line of work, a defense between the women he loved and the men out there who might otherwise be free to prey upon them. It made O'Neill wonder what was wrong with his race and his gender that so many women ended up dead on this slab every year. He felt like lake ice after a thaw, a smooth surface that was one skate-edge away from cracking into murderous splinters. He didn’t know if he could do this any more.

“Jack?”

O'Neill looked up in surprise. He thought Kawalsky had gone home hours ago. 

Kawalsky held out a mug of coffee and O'Neill gave him what he hoped was a warm smile. “Thanks.”

Kawalsky sat down and reached across to turn Sha’re’s photograph around and then turned around Jackson’s as well. The imprint of Ballard-Green’s boot was clearly visible. Kawalsky nodded. “The gardener’s not a gardener, he’s a private eye.”

“What?” O'Neill stared at him blankly, wondering if they were having a ‘the geese fly south from Moscow’ moment for which he had forgotten his codebook.

“Ray Teal’c, the gardener? He rang all my alarm bells so I made a few inquiries. He’s a licensed private detective apparently. Ex-marine or something. The information is a little sketchy but his prints are nowhere in the system so I think he’s legit. When I called him on it he admitted it straight away and said he was there on behalf of a client. The client’s name is Gardner, which I thought was kind of funny.”

“They’re supposed to show their ID.” O'Neill had always wondered how useful that was but it was true, nevertheless, they had procedures, just like the police force. “And what kind of a name is ‘Teal'c’?”

“The client needed him to be undercover. He agreed. And I don’t know. Maybe it’s Native American.”

“Ray ‘Running Dog’ Teal’c of the Shoshoni?”

“I don’t know. Is it important?”

“No. It’s just a stupid name. Why did this Gardner guy hire Teal'c anyway? Is Tony schtupping his wife?” O'Neill was sure Tony would be the type of man that married women would find irresistible. He wondered if the guy ever used them as an ashtray. The rage had been on slow burn since he’d seen the full extent of Jackson’s bruising and he could still taste the bitterness of it in his mouth. 

“Actually, the client used to schtupp the Boy Wonder before Jackson had his second breakdown. Doctor Sarah Gardner. She’s an archaeologist. She’s married to a guy called Steven Rayner now but she must still have feelings for Jackson because she hired this Teal’c guy to keep an eye on him.”

O'Neill sat up straighter. “Why? What’s she worried about?”

“I asked Teal’c the same thing and apparently she just told him to keep an eye on him. Said she didn’t want to prejudice his inquiry. She must have money because this Teal’c guy doesn’t come cheap.”

With an effort O'Neill dragged his mind back to their actual case. “What does he know about Sha’re?”

“Nothing. He didn’t see anything. He says wherever she was killed he doesn’t think it was at Gray Gables. He said she was a quiet girl. Kept herself to herself. He also said he’d been doing some asking around and did we know Sha’re was the second maid who worked there to be murdered?”

“What?” O'Neill couldn’t avoid the realization that while he had spent the day unsuccessfully attempting to persuade an ex mental patient to lodge a complaint against a family member, Kawalsky seemed to have been doing some bona fide detecting. “How did we miss that?”

A black and white photograph revealed a pretty fair-haired woman whose smile revealed teeth with an appealing gap between them. A light dusting of freckles covered her nose. Apart from that she looked like a beauty queen. O'Neill wished they weren’t always smiling in the photographs. He’d seen more pretty girls in pictures after they were dead, he swore, than he’d ever met alive. 

Kawalsky pushed the file across to him. “Name of Ivana Novakovich. She wasn’t working for the Ballard-Greens at the time. She’d moved onto a different family. People called Foulsham. It happened about three months ago. She was strangled too. The boyfriend swears he didn’t do it but there was no other suspect and they’d been quarrelling a lot. They’re still trying to build a case.”

“Does Tony Ballard-Green have an alibi for the time Ivana Novakovich was killed?”

Kawalsky sighed. “Jack…”

O'Neill shoved the picture of Jackson’s bruised ribs across the desk at him and tapped it imperiously. “A nice guy didn’t do this.”

“A sane guy wouldn’t let him do that.” Kawalsky examined the photograph and shook his head. “Did Jackson say whether or not he and Ballard-Green are in a relationship?”

“Jackson doesn’t know what a relationship is. Jackson thinks it’s normal to have the crap kicked out of him on a regular basis. Jackson…” He broke off because the rage was out of all proportion. The need to rescue someone too easily traced back to his failure to save his own son. He needed a project. Needed a bad guy to blame and an innocent to save, and life wasn’t like that. O'Neill shrugged hopelessly. “I don’t know if he’d even understand the question. Between all the medication he’s on and his fucked up life, he’s lost any grip on what normality is.”

Kawalsky looked around the crowded room. “He should fit right in here then.”

O'Neill bowed his head, feeling the ache of weariness in his shoulders, the old grate in his knees. “Ballard-Green has a temper and when he loses it he likes to put his hands around Jackson’s neck and squeeze. The bruises on Jackson’s throat are similar to the one’s around Sha’re’s. I think he gets off on hurting people who can’t fight back.”

“Sha’re wasn’t raped, neither was Ivana. Tony lives with Jackson and maybe Jackson annoys the crap out of him. Servants aren’t going to be answering back. Anyway, forensics has the photographs now and they can compare the bruises. The trouble is, if our only proof that Tony made the marks on Jackson’s neck comes from Jackson’s testimony then we’d have to put Jackson on the stand and I doubt he’d make the best witness in the world.”

O'Neill had to acknowledge the truth of that. He also didn’t doubt Jackson went out of his way to attract Tony’s anger. Took a kind of twisted satisfaction in making the man lose control. Perhaps it was sexual. Perhaps their attraction was mutual. Perhaps…

“You should go home. Get some sleep. You look beat.”

For a second, Kawalsky let his mask drop and there was the concern he tried so hard to conceal. Usually that was enough to make O'Neill lash out, outraged by any hint of sympathy but today it touched him, perhaps some slice of his heart had thawed out enough to be touched. The muscles in his face felt as if they belonged to someone else as he tried to remember how to smile. 

“So do you. But you’re probably right. See you.” He never used Kawalsky’s first name now. There could only be one Charlie in the world for him and that one was dead and buried. To soften the omission he added, “Say hi to Christine from me.” He couldn’t bring himself to mention Kawalsky’s child. He hated the smallness of his own reaction but Alison hadn’t been mentioned between them since the death of his son. She was the real reason why he couldn’t visit Kawalsky’s house. She would greet him as she always had, as if he was what he had been before, and he would explode with grief or rage. 

“I’ll do that.” Someone who knew him less well would have pushed too hard there, tried to slip in a dinner invitation but Kawalsky was a true friend and kept his distance. “Night, Jack.”

“Night.” As he headed for his car he knew he should be thinking about that girl lying on her slab and that bereaved husband who was perhaps also a murderer sitting in his cell, but he couldn’t get his mind to cooperate. He found himself thinking about the way Jackson had offered himself up for inspection, so full of trust despite the bruises on his skin, that little flickering smile he’d given O'Neill, wary and innocent at the same time, like an alien visitor, like a lost child.

As he got into his car he had a sudden image of Jackson lying on the bed and himself pushing up that oversized shirt to reveal those bruised ribs, then bending his head and very, very gently brushing the heated skin with his lips.

He shook his head to clear it and wondered where the hell a thought like that was coming from. Kawalsky was right. He definitely needed to get some more sleep.

***

Daniel woke abruptly to darkness and the hair on the back of his neck prickling with anxiety, heart beating fast as he realized someone was standing by the bed. For a split-second he hoped it was O'Neill and then he heard an incoherent mumble, caught the familiar scent of alcohol, male sweat, and stale cologne, and knew that it was Tony.

“I’m asleep,” he muttered. 

Tony crashed down onto the bed next to him. He was stinking drunk, the alcohol coming off him in a wave, like having a distillery in the room. His body was a tangible heat and he already smelt of arousal. Bottles clinked in his hand, the square outline of a whiskey bottle and the rounded brown glass of beer. The drugs didn’t smell of anything tonight, suggesting Tony had injected instead of smoking them but Daniel sensed those too. Conscience dampening, libido raising, anger fuelling ‘shabu’, crystal meth for people prepared to pay extra for purity – the ‘ice’ that had burned so many bruises onto his body over the years.

Daniel’s heart sank. “I’m not in a party mood right now.” 

Tony wasn’t listening, too drunk, stoned, and fixated on whatever he was planning. He kicked off his shoes clumsily and Daniel listened to them hitting the floor, sighing in resignation as Tony fumbled with his socks, it taking him several attempts to get them off.

Always the gentleman, Tony, Daniel thought bitterly. He wondered what had brought on this outbreak of chivalry, times since all the man had done was unzip his fly never mind going to the effort required to remove his socks. Aloud he said: “Sleep in your own room. I can help you get to it.” He tried to make it sound like an enticing prospect but evidently failed.

“No.” Tony put a hand under the covers and Daniel started as it touched his back. The hand was warm, almost soothing as it circled his spine, fingertips searching for the tell-tale heat of bruises, proof of previous possession. Tony mumbled at his ear, licking at the lobe and Daniel slumped into the mattress in resignation. Tony was always unpredictable in this state, he could go from fond caresses to seismic explosions of rage in the time it took to flick a light switch, but maybe this time he would just curl up and start snoring, the way he sometimes did. Daniel had always suspected that half the reason Tony slept with so many women at his various tennis clubs and gyms was because he so hated to sleep alone. He’d often thought a psychiatrist would have a field day with his stepbrother, but then psychiatrists had already had several field days with him so he could hardly gloat.

“You have to take your pills,” Tony muttered in his ear.

“I’ve taken my pills,” Daniel hissed back. It was a lie. He’d been relieved to slip back into the house without interrogation from Zinnia or Tony and only a disconcertingly searching look from the new gardener, and had hurried straight back to his room to find an email from Sarah with attachments that had kept him happily fascinated for hours. It was only when the print outs of inscriptions had become too dim to see that he’d realized it was long past supper time and the food left for him on his table by someone was not just cold but congealed. He’d switched on the light but left the food to go on congealing. With an intriguing form of hieroglyphs to wrestle with there was no way he was dimming his faculties with drugs. If the visions came, let them come, at least the sane part of his mind would be unclouded. 

It had been late when he showered then fell into bed, still turning inscriptions over in his mind and wondering where Sarah had found them. Everything from that dig was supposed to have been lost. The shipping company had paid out half a million in compensation and Sarah had wept when the check fell out of the letter because no money in the world could pay them back for what they’d lost. She’d always insisted the government had stolen their findings for their own sinister motives. As he’d told her at the time when she was stamping around the room spouting conspiracy theories, exactly which one of them was supposed to have paranoid delusions here? Now, he guessed she was proven right. These were the photographs she and he had taken all those years ago in Egypt and they certainly hadn’t been destroyed in any plane crash.

He suspected these photographs had been stolen back from their original thieves. Sarah was proud of her ability to hack into anything and she had a stubbornness he could only admire. He wished he could have gone to her and Steven’s wedding. Not that Steven was good enough for her, of course, but he could have kissed the bride. Kissing Sarah had never been anything but a pleasure and he had to admit it had always been even more of a pleasure when Steven was watching. He thought of her slender body and how limber she was, getting him in death grip between long narrow thighs and threatening to break his back with one twist of her endless legs if he didn’t agree to be her sex slave for always. He didn’t remember offering a lot of opposition to that suggestion.

Tony’s drunken mumbling at his ear brought him unpleasantly back to reality: “Did you take your pills or didn’t you?”

“Yes, I took the damned pills.” Daniel shifted angrily, resenting the weight on his back, the solid wall of muscle that was Tony’s immoveable body. Tony was biting his neck making him put his head back in the way Tony liked, the exposure of his throat, the submissive flex of his spine, the involuntary raising of his ass. Sarah had always played his body like a xylophone as well, but he’d preferred the music she had made.

“You’re such a bad liar.” A hand was clamped over his mouth and he panicked. Too many times Tony had waltzed him to the edge of death, the fingers gripping his throat or covering his nose and mouth until white lights made a firework display on the inside of his eyelids. One day, Tony often promised him, he wouldn’t let him come round again and every time it happened, Daniel wondered if this was the day when Tony would be too drunk to stop in time, when the urge to keep squeezing his throat would overwhelm him, or the pleasure of feeling Daniel’s panicked writhe and thrash dim to the heavy limbed passivity of defeat would keep Tony throttling him a half minute too long. He felt his heart rate begin to race, was beginning to struggle in earnest when his tongue tasted the sugar coating of a pill and he swallowed. By now he should have learned to flick it under his tongue, he supposed and spit it out later. He’d tried practicing that in the hospital, but he’d never been very good at it, and more often than not the pill had ended up in his bloodstream, that happened now. 

“Drink this.” 

The neck of a beer bottle was put to his mouth and tipped. Daniel sputtered, coughed, but also swallowed, and the pill was washed down. A mouthful of whiskey followed the beer, and he coughed on that too as it burnt a fiery path to his empty stomach.

Tony licked the beer from his chin, then his mouth, then he was kissing him, his stubble coarse against his face. Even though the tongue pushed into his mouth tasted unpleasantly of some woman he’d never even met, Daniel submitted because it really was easier to just go with the flow when the man was in this mood. It got it over faster and with the minimum of conversation. He suspected what Tony was really doing was seeking the comfort of another warm body combined with the need to prove once again that he was the dominant male in the household. Well, he was, and good luck to him and all other alpha fucking males and their tiresome machismo. He just wished Tony could prove it quickly and then they could both get some sleep.

Tony was pulling at him clumsily, trying to maneuver him into a more accessible position, but Daniel refused to help him, not loosening the towel he’d had wrapped around his waist when he fell into bed. He gritted his teeth as Tony kissed him again then began to lick and bite at his neck, nipping harder to make him react as he turned his head away. The foreplay didn’t seem to have a lot to do with making it good for Daniel, as it never was, just about making Tony feel better about himself. He sometimes thought Tony had enough self-hatred to fill the Great Pyramid of Cheops. 

The tablet was kicking in now and it was one of the bad ones. He hated these. Daniel looked at his hand in the soupy darkness and it was glowing, the veins phosphorescent in the gloom. If he looked in a mirror his eyeballs would run. He closed his eyes and tried to concentrate on the texture of the pillow, the coarseness of Egyptian cotton. Zinnia fussed about his linen. She fussed about a lot of things, expending her energies in irrelevant acts of baffling complexity. There was always some aesthetic whole she was striving for that she would never quite reach. The day she had this monolithic house restored to perfection was the day she would have to sell it and begin again. Even for Daniel, with whom she barely ever conversed, his madness frightening to her, everything about him an embarrassment so excruciating he thought he was probably the cause of most of the painkillers she swallowed to ward off her persistent migraines, even for him the room had to be perfect, the faucets in that bathroom in which he was never permitted a razor just so. She had spent days getting the powdery texture of the paint on his walls just right. Had brought someone in especially to hang the – to her ugly – reminders of his Egyptologist past, even though they were out of keeping with the rest of the décor and made her wince whenever she made eye contact with him. She often confused him with small kindnesses, offering them to him tentatively like someone afraid of being scratched by an unpredictable cat. He supposed it was displacement activity for a guilt she didn’t want to examine, for not taking responsibility for her son….

Tony’s fingers were under the towel now, tugging impatiently before beginning an intimate exploration. It didn’t matter how drunk the man was, it never stopped him managing to get it up and get it in, if not always at the first attempt. 

Daniel gritted his teeth as fingers wet with beer probed at him, prizing him open. “Use a fucking condom.”

“Why? I haven’t got you pregnant yet.” Tony bit his shoulder, hard enough to hurt.

Daniel flinched but opened his legs all the same. “Selfish prick.” He jabbed him with his elbow. Not resistance, not an actual ‘Get off me, I don’t want this’ because that was futile and turned him into a victim, just a protest lodged. He regretted fighting back earlier in the day, it only made Tony more brutal and himself weaker in both their eyes. The only way to keep his dignity was to be an uncooperative participant. If he truly objected and it still happened anyway, that left him powerless.

Tony kissed him on the ear, breathing hot and harsh, the excitement tangible in those gusts of warm air fluttering Daniel’s shorn hair, his elbows straightened, wrapping his body around Daniel’s. Pain burned, a stab of it, and Daniel cried out as he was penetrated without warning. “Jesus Christ!”

“Shut up. It’s not that bad.” Tony mumbled something else incoherent, but he was too drunk to be anything but clumsy. He pulled out roughly, fingered Daniel incompetently while he bit at his neck, then pushed back in again. Daniel swore under his breath and bit the pillow. 

“Just hurry up and finish,” he hissed through the cotton. When he darted a glance at his hand he could see the bones straight through it. A snake was winding sinuously down the wall. He watched in fascination as it looped its muscular body through the bars of the bed, body glowing green and gold. He could hear Tony grunting rhythmically, those familiar jolts of pain stabbing through him, but the snake was a distraction at least. It weaved through another bar and looked him in the eye and he saw ankhs glowing in their depths. Symbols of life. Something stolen from Sha’re and Nick and his parents, yet left to him. The next thrust was harder and wilder and he braced himself against it, feeling Tony’s fingers digging into his flesh, hearing the slap of the man’s balls against his ass, the squelching sound of flesh on flesh. Tony’s grunts were getting louder, his breathing harsher. Quick climaxes weren’t always a good thing with Tony. Sometimes he treated the first fuck like an aperitif before getting down to the main course, sex shot through with rage and guilt and the need to hit some switch inside himself that maybe only the whiteout of climax could ever reach. 

When Tony took enough of the wrong kind of drugs he could stay in this mental place for days, one unsatisfactory fuck following another, frustration building into blows of increasing savagery as Tony tried and failed to get away from the reality of who he was and what he’d done. Sometimes Daniel believed he was undoubtedly the sanest person in this household – and he had a phantom snake now curled around his arm, its tongue heading unerringly for the fascinated confusion of his eye.

***

O'Neill had done some checking and found out that the dead grandfather of Crazy Boy Jackson had been an eccentric archaeologist called Nick Ballard. His wife had been an archaeologist as well and neither of them had ever taken any interest in her family’s money, that had accrued in stocks, shares, and complicated trusts, unnoticed and unheeded by them. Saal, their old rambling house on the outskirts of the city, had filled itself with books and artifacts, and letters from solicitors had often gone unanswered. But the money had a momentum of its own, swelling and shrinking through good years and bad but ultimately always increasing, a bloated monster invisible to archaeologists who never read their mail. Ballard’s wife hadn’t even read the letters from her doctor telling her the lump they’d examined wasn’t benign after all and she’d died fast at the end, shrinking before her husband’s horrified gaze as the tumor devoured her from the inside out. Ballard hadn’t learned from that experience either, had been uncontactable when his only daughter and her husband had died setting up the display that had orphaned their only son. The money had continued to gorge itself on not always ethical investments while Ballard took the boy into places where malaria and fever lurked and scorpions and poisonous snakes slithered silently through their tents at night and both emerged unscathed. 

There had been nothing conventional about Jackson’s childhood. His parents and grandfather had never considered the possibility he might be anything other than an archaeologist. It was possible they had forgotten any other career choice existed. The lost and the dead had called to them and they had answered the call. Perhaps they were policemen of the past, investigating its crimes, deciphering its clues, solving its mysteries. Jackson had seemed to thrive mentally on his nomadic life. He had been treated as an adult for most of his childhood, helping with digs, translating alongside other linguists, wallowing in dirt and learning to treat it with delicacy. O'Neill guessed archaeologists must sift through their tombs the way he and his colleagues sifted the clues at a crime scene, he combing through the contents of a wood chipper for the single tooth that would prove a murder had been done, while they tenderly teased loose the shattered fragment of a fingerbone from some thousand year old tomb. He read the diaries of missing girls to try to work out where they might have gone, checked phone records and credit card bills, and archaeologists painstakingly translated hieroglyphs and those strange wedge-like scratches that recent days had taught him were called cuneiform. But for them the knowledge was enough, the search pure, no rage in it, or perhaps the dead called to them too, asked to be found, asked that their deaths should be understood even if they couldn’t ever truly be avenged. 

Once, in a shallow grave somewhere he had come across the body of a young wife they’d been searching for. They’d known for months the husband had done it, the bloodstains on the carpet had told a story no bleach could wash out, Luminol finding the half-erased splatters on the skirting board that had made them suspect from the start there could be no happy ending to this story. It was the parents he’d always felt sorry for, more even than the victim herself. People who’d raised a child lovingly and protected her from strangers only to have her doomed by her own choice, taken from them by the man to whom they’d entrusted her. Back then, ironically, he’d been relieved it was a son he had and not a daughter, he’d looked into the eyes of too many fathers who had lost their little girls. The father of this girl had told him from the start that he knew his daughter was dead and her husband had killed her but he wanted him not to get away with it and more than anything else he wanted her buried ‘decent’. O'Neill hadn’t exactly promised him but he and Kawalsky had both walked out of there determined to find the dead woman somehow.

By detective work and the process of elimination he’d worked out in the end where the body had to be, not in the first site they’d excavated so carefully, but twenty-five miles west where the loggers wouldn’t be coming this year. And there she’d been, just bones as the first snow began to fall, the crack in her skull exactly where he’d thought it would be from the baseball bat her husband had thought preferable to the loss of earnings that would follow if she got the divorce she was seeking. Even though she was gone beyond the chill of winter and he was wearing only a t-shirt underneath his windbreaker, he’d taken off his jacket to cover her, watching the wet flakes melting on his skin, from white frost to water and a numbness that felt as if it would never thaw. As he and the dead woman waited together for the ambulance to arrive, it had taken all his self-control not to hold the quiet skeleton by the hand. Unlike the archaeologists who had raised Jackson, O'Neill realized he had long since seen too much of death. 

 

The file on Nicholas Ballard arrived two mornings after he’d had Jackson examined by Doc Fraiser, and he and Kawalsky pored over it together. Neither of them was saying anything aloud about the way this case was shaping up. They were gathering evidence, that was all, trying to get an angle on the murder of a woman found dumped fully-clothed in an alley, possibly by her husband, possibly by person or persons unknown. Kawalsky had spent a long time on the phone the day before to some specialist in Vancouver who studied the patterns of serial killers, insisting their actions were no more random than the flocking of birds, there was always logic, the man had insisted, even in insanity, it was finding the key to the pattern that was the trick to finding the killer, like realizing how the world looked to someone whose vision was distorted. If both of these women had been killed by the same man than there would be a reason for it, even if the reason was unreasonable, it would still exist. Murders, the specialist had added, were never the product of a reasonable mind. A reasonable mind would always find another way.

As he turned over the pages of the cold case file that was Doctor Ballard’s unsolved murder, O'Neill wondered what that made him. He had chosen, however briefly, a profession where finding another way had not been his problem. The strain of it had almost driven him to insanity himself, and had put permanent and ultimately fatal cracks in the foundations of his marriage. Sara had been right to say that no one could live with him until he learned to live with himself. For some reason whenever he thought of those old missions now, he found himself thinking of Jackson and the bruises at his throat, the bootmark on his ribcage, as if there was some redemption for him there. Did he have to rescue Jackson to rescue himself? He’d tried to call the morning after he’d dropped Jackson back at Gray Gables but the maid who had answered the phone had told him Doctor Jackson was asleep and Mr Ballard-Green wasn’t available to take his call. Already his anxiety about the millionaire with string tied around his waist and no shoes on his feet was starting to itch at him, like a burr under his clothes. Very soon he was going to have to make a follow-up visit.

“I can see why it remained unsolved.” Kawalsky sighed as he finished reading another forensic report, on the tire tracks this time. “The only car tracks were made by the mailman, Ballard’s car, Jackson’s car, and Ballard-Green’s car. The house was so remote no one saw anything and because Jackson didn’t report the death when he found Ballard dead the body had gone in and out of rigor by the time it was seen by a medical examiner. They couldn’t even go by stomach contents because Ballard never ate regular meals and tended to eat breakfast cereal for supper and takeaways for breakfast – when he remembered to eat at all. The murder weapon was a stone statue that belonged to Ballard which produced no prints.”

O'Neill also sighed. “Who found the body? Jackson. Who failed to report it? Jackson. Who benefited from Ballard’s death? Jackson. Whose family hurried to shove him into an asylum and get him declared mentally incompetent for questioning? Jackson.”

“But they don’t think he did it.” Kawalsky handed O'Neill another piece of paper. “Or if he did it, he doesn’t he know he did it. Before the family came and snatched him away from the guys questioning him, he completed a polygraph, which he passed, and he seemed totally grief stricken over his grandfather’s death. They said they know when someone’s acting, and he wasn’t acting. He kept insisting no one had any grudge against Ballard or could possibly have wanted to harm him. There had been a burglary up the road a few weeks before and they were waiting for Jackson to mention it to them, but he didn’t. He didn’t seem to know anything about it and when they asked him if he thought anyone would have broken in to steal the artifacts in the house Jackson said they were only valuable to another archaeologist and another archaeologist would never steal them. He didn’t do or say anything to shift the blame away from himself.”

“Did they interview Ballard-Green?” O'Neill reached for the relevant paperwork and Kawalsky handed it to him.

“Yes, he didn’t know anything. Hadn’t seen Ballard for three days. Was home all day on the day of the murder. His alibi was confirmed by his mother and no one else as it was the maid’s day off. The tracks in the drive way that came from his car looked pretty fresh but Jackson’s tracks had gone over the top of them and it wasn’t really possible to say if they’d been made three days before Jackson arrived or three hours.”

“So he could have done it?”

Kawalsky shrugged. “He didn’t benefit under Ballard’s will. And they couldn’t find any forensic evidence to link Ballard-Green to the house that wasn’t explainable by him being a regular visitor there.”

“Did they look in the incinerator of the Ballard-Green’s house for any evidence of clothing being burned?”

“Yes, and they didn’t find anything. But he could have buried them in the woods around Ballard’s house. The place is so isolated no one except the mailman ever went there. If the mailman hadn’t arrived when he did the murder might have gone undiscovered for days.”

“Was Jackson’s visit scheduled? Did anyone else know he was going to see his grandfather that day?”

“According to Jackson’s own statement, when he was in the States and not on a dig abroad, he always stayed with his grandfather during vacation unless he was staying with his girlfriend and he and his girlfriend had split up by that point. On the day Ballard was killed it was the last day of term.”

“So, Tony would have known Jackson was going to be there? When the police interviewed him did he mention that Jackson had killed his dog in the past?”

Kawalsky looked through the statement, scanning it with a practiced eye. “Yes, he did. He also said that he thought Jackson had been heading for another breakdown for a while. The people who worked with Jackson disagreed, they said the break-up with his girlfriend had depressed and upset him but he hadn’t felt the need to go back on his medication and he seemed to coping.”

“So Tony tried to give the impression Jackson was crazier than he actually was?”

“Or believed that he was crazier than other people thought he was.” Kawalsky was always so damned reasonable. “The cops who interviewed Jackson and Ballard-Green described Ballard-Green as ‘obsessively protective’ of Jackson. His attitude was that Jackson was crazy and they were going to make him crazier if they kept badgering him with their stupid questions. I phoned them yesterday to ask if they remembered the case and they said Tony Ballard-Green acted like any older brother would whose kid brother had found a family member dead. He was pretty obnoxious to the police but he was pretty good to Jackson. He took off his coat and wrapped it around him, things like that.”

“Remorse.” O'Neill wasn’t in the mood to hear anything positive about Anthony Ballard-Green. “Even murderer’s feel remorse.”

Kawalsky darted him a curious look. “Do you really think it was Tony? The cops I spoke to said they thought it was probably a burglar Ballard disturbed.”

“So they don’t think it was Jackson?”

“No.” Kawalsky opened his notebook. “They said that officially Jackson was the most likely suspect because he was the one who benefited financially from Ballard’s death, but off the record they didn’t think he’d done it or was capable of doing it or had any real reason to do it as his interest in the money appeared non-existent and it’s not as if he’s done anything with it since. If he’d gone straight out and bought himself a Porsche, maybe they would have looked twice at him, but he doesn’t even own a bicycle. DS Black’s unofficial summary was ‘he seemed like a nice kid who was in the wrong place at the wrong time’.”

“Tony didn’t smell like a murderer to them?” 

His partner gave another sigh and O'Neill wondered what he was holding back. There was a momentary hesitation before Kawalsky said, “You know as well as I do that going into a murder investigation prejudiced usually means you end up prosecuting the wrong guy.”

“And you know as well as I do that we all have instincts about these things.”

“All Ballard-Green is guilty of that we know of is slapping Jackson around. And for all we know Jackson likes it. They could both be into S & M.”

His deep-rooted resistance to that idea was something O'Neill knew he was shying away from examining too closely but he kept his face determinedly blank. “What did they say about Tony?”

Kawalsky shrugged in defeat. “That if he’d been the one to benefit in the will they would have been a lot more suspicious.”

“I think he’s crazier than Jackson.”

“On what evidence?” Kawalsky demanded.

O'Neill got to his feet. “Gut instinct. A soldier’s gut instinct, backed up by a policeman’s gut instinct. You know what I mean. The something missing that means someone can go from anger to murder where the rest of us would go for a walk or break a vase.”

“Maybe Jackson’s bruises are the proof Tony isn’t a killer, have you thought about that? Maybe what he does when a murderer would kill someone is punch Jackson out instead.”

O'Neill knew he was right. He also knew Kawalsky was right. His open mind had closed the second he saw that boot mark on Jackson’s ribcage. He didn’t like Anthony Ballard-Green and he did like fucked up weirdo boy Jackson despite his multi-colored pill collection. If Jackson turned out to have killed Ballard and Sha’re for some insane reasons of his own, or while in what O'Neill’s therapist had used to refer to as a ‘fugue’ state, O'Neill was going to be devastated. Going to see Jackson again was therefore a very bad idea. It would probably cost him what remaining objectivity he had left. But he was still going to do it, sooner or later.

“Let’s go and talk to Farouk again,” he suggested.

“I think he’s told us everything he knows.” But Kawalsky still got to his feet and reached for his coat. Casually he said, “Are you going to interview Jackson again?”

“Well, he’s a suspect, isn’t he?” O'Neill countered.

Kawalsky looked him in the eye. “Yes, Jack, he is.” The warning was clear and O'Neill listened to it. Whether or not he was going to heed it was an entirely different matter.

***

Captain Samantha Carter had been alternating between hope and anxiety ever since they left Colorado. She knew Colonel Makepeace didn’t really understand why it mattered to her so much, this project, her project. He had read all the reports and was willing to accept that if her speculation about its function was correct then it could be a valuable tool for the US military. The disappearance of Ernest Littlefield, which had caused the project to be shut down in the first place all those years before, was also the only real proof they had that it wasn’t just an object of worship. But the Pentagon had been adamant that this time there could be no random experimentation. Before anything was attempted there had to be comprehension of what they were dealing with. They needed to see a translation not just for the writing on the cover stones but for the writing on the ring itself. The writing on the cover stones had been translated albeit not in a way that was entirely satisfactory, but the writing on the ring itself, the writing that the impossible Doctor McKay insisted was mathematical formula, probably Phoenician or the like, and which she felt in her guts was an alphabet for an ancient language, perhaps even the original proto-language from which the most ancient languages had evolved, that had consistently eluded all translation.

General West would never have let her come here to interview Doctor Jackson, she knew that. Even with Hammond’s much more supportive backing, she was more than a little ashamed of the way she had obtained the information she had. Desperation made people act irrationally, it was true, but it didn’t make everyone act unethically and she had crossed a line McKay wouldn’t have done. He’d looked at her in disbelief when she suggested it.

“The USAF robbed those archaeologists of their artifacts?”

“Confiscated. We couldn’t risk the Program becoming common knowledge.”

McKay waved an arm at the great stone ring before which she had probably spent as much time bent in contemplation as any priestess of the past. “What ‘Program’? We have an artifact whose function we don’t understand, whose inscriptions we can’t translate, that we can’t find a way to make work safely. Since when was that a ‘Program’? It’s barely a thesis right now.”

He was all smart mouth and no trousers, and she’d told him that. He would never just try something and see if it worked. He pointed out holes in her theories and quibbled endlessly about her workings, checking and rechecking everything and always maintaining that to jump from A to B in her theorizing as she was doing was unscientific, illogical, and unsafe. And yet he was brilliant. Ironically, for a man so arrogant, a lot more brilliant than he seemed to realize. Hammond had asked them to find a way to work together, and they had, after a fashion, but she was only too aware that sometimes the two of them sounded more like a catfight than a pair of scientists. Still, they were one up on Zwicky and Baade of the Mount Wilson Observatory so far, she might possibly have threatened to kill McKay on occasion but he was not yet refusing to be left alone with her.

The fact remained that the only writings comparable to those found on the cartouche on the cover stones on top of the artifact were those discovered by Doctor Sarah Gardner and Doctor Daniel Jackson on their 1990 dig. The USAF had hoped that with extra text to work on, they would stand a better chance of making sense of the inscription, but it had defeated almost everyone. Context, they were constantly told, was everything, and the Egyptologists hired by the USAF could find no context for this inscription. The original inscription on the cover stones had been translated – badly, Carter suspected as – “Year 10 of king? Sky. Ra. The Sun Disk. Coffin. Door to Heaven.” None of which had helped, whereas she was sure a proper translation should have cast far more illumination on the problem than those unlikely words. Then there were the symbols on the stone ring and on the cover stones, which no one had been able to decipher.

Meyers kept insisting that the form of Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs on the cover stones and on the walls of the tomb excavated by Gardner and Jackson were unlike any he had ever encountered. But she felt he should have made more progress than he had. Surely there should have been some linguist’s instinct that came into play that told him at least the sense of what this dead pharaoh or departed alien visitor had been wanting told?

She told herself Gardner had started it. NID had reported a computer security breach that had then turned up as a second breach in the project’s computers. The Russians had been suspected, but when traced back they had quickly realized the person hacking into their mainframe was none other than one of the archaeologists whose research material they had ‘confiscated’ those years before. Carter had worked swiftly to stop any repercussions falling onto Gardner. A part of her admired this fellow scientist for her abilities to do what others had not. And they owed her, no doubt about that. They had been using Gardner’s research notes as a cross-reference. Carter told herself she was thinking of national security as she hacked into Gardner’s PC. It was vital that the secrecy of the project should be maintained. Vital that they knew how much Gardner had learned. The truth was, she was desperate. And her hunch had turned out to be right. Gardner herself was as baffled by the hieroglyphs as they were but the person she had been emailing them to, the Doctor Daniel Jackson who had fallen off the edge of the academic world a few years earlier and straight into a psychiatric hospital, seemed to be able to make at least some kind of sense of them. 

McKay had said it was immoral and ought to be illegal to do what she was doing, hacking into a hacker’s computer and reading her emails over her shoulder. Who the hell did the USAF think it was?

“The last line of defense,” Carter retorted tartly.

McKay waved his hands in the air. “Against what?”

“Against whatever could come through that thing.” She pointed to the great stone ring. She had turned herself inside out working with computer technicians to try to find a way to create a computer program that would make it work. And it did work, after a fashion, they just didn’t know how or why. They made it spin, they made it light up, they measured the energy build up, they analyzed its chemical structure. They had grainy black and white footage of it working as it was presumably meant to work – a billow of light which the research notes insisted was blue and then a portal opening. But that was the one combination of symbols they weren’t allowed to try and it could have been an anomaly, no one knew for sure. She knew in her heart and in her soul that it was a device to send people to the distant reaches of the galaxy. She had always wanted to be an astronaut, and not just to walk on the surface of the moon, but to reach the Oort Cloud. A place McKay had a maddening habit of pointing out only theoretically existed, whereas she always insisted that just because no telescope existed powerful enough to see it, that didn’t mean it wasn’t there. 

“And just because you feel in your water that Ernst Öpik was right on the money and Jan Oort’s calculations couldn’t have been righter, doesn’t mean it’s there either.”

She had long since come to the conclusion there was nothing more annoying than a Doctor Rodney McKay when he was being reasonable. “You know, one way to prove the existence of black holes would be for you to go and find one,” she told him tersely. “Just be sure to send me a Polaroid before it turns you to spaghetti.”

“We don’t know anything could come through that thing.” McKay was talking with exaggerated patience now – as if to a small and particularly stupid child. “We don’t know what it does. We think we know. We think it’s a device for transporting people between two fixed points in space but it’s only a hypothesis right now.”

“It’s a ‘door to heaven’,” she insisted. “That’s what it says on the cover stones and that’s what is said on the tomb excavated by Gardner and Jackson. I think that means it’s a gateway to the stars or a device used to travel to other galaxies faster than the speed of light.”

McKay licked his lips. “That’s because you’re a frustrated cosmonaut who saw Neil Armstrong at an impressionable age. All we know is that it’s a big stone artifact used to worship long dead gods. Perhaps it was called a ‘door to heaven’ because people were thrown through it and so they’d go willingly to sacrifice they were told they’d reach nirvanah.”

“That makes no sense. All our data suggests it’s a way of using wormholes to travel from one point in the galaxy to another.”

“So, maybe they buried their victims in space. It’s so ancient, the mindset of the people who made it probably can’t be comprehended by us in this time and this place.”

“If people could use it to travel from here to somewhere else then maybe they could it to travel from somewhere else to here.”

McKay rolled his eyes. “So, dismantle it then! No one came through it while it was lying in the desert all those years. We are playing with things we don’t understand.”

“So, we need to learn to understand it!”

“How?” McKay walked over to it and touched it. “What does it tell you? What does it say to you?”

Carter looked up at it, the sweep of blue-gray stone, the impossible hieroglyphs that no one could translate. “It tells me we’re not alone in the universe and there may be ways to travel further than Alpha Centauri in the blink of an eye.”

McKay sighed and shrugged. “I knew it. The damned thing obviously likes you a lot more than it likes me. All it’s telling me is that it’s lunchtime and I’m hungry.”

So, here she was. The eleventh hour action of a desperate scientist who had long since left scientific rationality behind. So afraid was she that this project would become another Waxahachie Superconducting Supercollider that she was seeking the advice of a madman, because he had translated within a couple of weeks the writing on the tomb wall that no one hired by the USAF had been able to comprehend in years.

Makepeace had insisted he needed food after all that flying. It was long past lunchtime and his stomach was rumbling, but she was too excited to eat. Jackson was her last chance. The last chance too for that stone ring she had come to think of as an entity in itself, one relying on her to be reborn and who, without her intervention, would be doomed to be buried once again, or else boxed up in a warehouse somewhere, quite possibly next to the Arc of the Covenant. She would put nothing past Area 51. 

McKay looked between her and the ring sometimes and told her their relationship reminded him of something from a horror movie. It the evil entity that called to her in her sleep, demanding to be awoken, she the gullible virgin that always had to pull back the coffin lid. She seemed to recall threatening to treat his citrus allergy with a force-feeding of lemon meringue pie if he ever used that analogy again, but she didn’t deny being obsessed. Some things, however, were worthy of obsession, be they the search for the cause of the irregularities in Neptune’s orbit or the way DNA worked, or a great stone ring that demanded to be understood while defying all comprehension. Another part of herself also wondered how it was possible that something so old, that had presumably been understood once when people were supposedly so much more primitive, defied their understanding now, when they were, as far as she knew, at the peak of human evolution. Had they regressed? Or was it so obvious that anyone should have been able to understand it if they only knew its cultural context. 

Carter looked at her situation: standing beside a dusty shrubbery on a baking afternoon in summer, hating the humidity and waiting for Makepeace to return from his late lunch so she could ask a certified madman to tell her what that stone ring did and how and why it did it. Perhaps McKay had a point.

“Are you looking for someone?”

That was, without a doubt, the sexiest voice she had ever heard. Carter turned to find a large handsome man with dark skin and darker eyes looking at her with great concentration. His head was shaved and it suited him, showing off the classic lines of his skull and jaw. He had thick curling eyelashes above extraordinarily shrewd eyes and the body of someone who had elevated keeping himself in shape to an art form. She had been keeping close to the hedges to avoid being seen from the house but the trowel in his hand suggested he was the gardener. Nothing else about him, however, suggested that was his profession. He was wearing a gray t-shirt that revealed the kind of muscles that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a Navy SEAL, and cut-offs that showed well-muscled thighs. There was a grace about the way he walked that spoke of an athlete, someone who kept himself in shape for a purpose, not just because he liked the way he looked that way. She doubted he had learned that noiseless tread potting pelargoniums. 

To say something she said: “Does Doctor Daniel Jackson live here?” 

The man nodded. “He does, although not often in the shrubbery. Who are you?”

She held out a hand. “Captain Samantha Carter of the USAF.”

His gaze flickered and she thought that this man was way too smart to be a gardener or else she had long been underestimating the intelligence of those who managed the world’s herbaceous borders. 

“Ray Teal’c.” He shook her hand and his grip was firm but not crushing. She had to admit she found him attractive, and was annoyed to find that she felt slightly guilty for doing so, as if she was being unfaithful to someone, despite the fact she was emphatically single, and McKay had no claim upon her of any kind. He glanced at her uniform and then smiled dryly. “I’m presuming you could navigate your way to the front door if you wanted to?”

“I’m waiting for someone. Did you say ‘Teal'c’?”

“Yes.”

“Unusual name.”

“Thank you.”

She hadn’t actually meant it as a compliment but he seemed determined to take it as one.

“Where does it come from?”

“My father. I inherited it from him along with my good looks and charming personality. Why are you here exactly?”

Now he was definitely willfully misunderstanding her, and apparently enjoying himself doing so. She narrowed her eyes. “Like I said, I’m waiting for someone.”

He inclined his head, an oddly graceful gesture. “Do you want some coffee while you wait?” He indicated a building through the trees. It was a small apartment, like a converted garage, with some kind of potting shed attached.

She hesitated, only because he was a stranger, male, six foot four, and probably around two hundred pounds, whereas she, for all her training, was female, five foot nine, and according to her bathroom scales – much too inclined of late to reproach her for missed meals – barely a hundred and ten. 

Seeing her hesitation he inclined his head again. “I’m presuming you’re armed? And I’m really not a psychopath or a rapist.”

“Are you a gardener?” she countered. 

He didn’t answer, only turning and beckoning to her then heading for the apartment. She followed him and did dart a brief glance at his rear view, partly to pay back McKay for making her feel as if she wasn’t single, and partly because she now realized it was far too long since she’d met a good looking guy who wasn’t in some way forbidden to her by his rank, his role, or her position in the USAF. 

As they passed through the potting shed she noticed the soil-testing strip on the table. It all looked very professional, the rows of plants, the books on gardening, but all the books were new, none of them well thumbed. She had done enough gardening in her time to recognize some of the plants that were being brought on here and couldn’t resist dipping the soil testing kit in the first one she recognized. When it showed the soil to be alkaline she couldn’t resist a smile at this confirmation of her assumptions.

“You’re not a really a gardener, are you?” She followed him into the apartment, a clean place, carefully impersonal, everything from the couch to the mirrors looking as if they had been supplied by his employers. She suspected he was a man who liked warm colors, rich rugs, and exotic wall hangings, perhaps the odd abstract icon from a modern gallery, an eclectic mix of styles that surprised as often as they revealed. This room was beige and devoid of any personality, least of all Teal’c’s. 

He looked over his shoulder at her as he reached for the coffee pot in the galley-sized kitchen. “What makes you say that?”

“You’re potting azaleas in limey soil. Which will kill them very quickly, by the way.”

“Damn.” He looked genuinely annoyed at that lapse and she guessed he was someone who liked to do whatever he did well, certainly too well to make such a basic mistake if gardening really was his chosen profession. As he handed her a mug of coffee he looked into her eyes as if he could read in them whether or not she was telling the truth. “So, why do you want to see Jackson?”

She took a hasty sip of coffee. It was too hot and scalded her tongue. “None of your business.”

Carter knew he knew something, it was there in the lazy confidence of his body language. Gardner had made it clear in her emails to Jackson that she was angry about their work being stolen. She had been talking about suing. Perhaps Teal’c was working for her.

Teal’c looked at her unblinkingly. “I hear he’s very good at translating ancient tablets.”

“We don’t tend to have a lot to do with ancient tablets.” 

He gave her one of those shrewd looks again, more amused than angered by her lying to him. “So, why are you here?”

“Why are you here?” she countered. “Are you a cop?”

He shrugged. “Not exactly. But the cops have been here. Everyone’s interested in Doctor Jackson this week.”

She felt her heart begin to sink. Of course the trouble with seeking the assistance of a madman was that he might always do something…mad. “Has he done something wrong?”

“That’s a good question. Unfortunately, no one knows the answer except Doctor Jackson himself, and the chances are he probably wouldn’t be able to remember even if he had.”

Her heart sank another few notches. “If he’s that unbalanced why isn’t he in a psychiatric hospital?”

Teal’c shrugged. “When you’re a millionaire you can sometimes buy everything. Even freedom.” He nodded up at the windows high at the back of the house and she saw that some of them were barred. “And sometimes you can’t.”

***

O'Neill drove towards Gray Gables with his conversation with Farouk still turning over in his head. Most men protested their innocence in Farouk’s position, but the man didn’t seem to care. He answered questions with a shrug, not the bravado of those who felt themselves untouchable – for whom the lives they stole had no meaning and no value, everyone a shadow puppet except their godlike selves – just as if it didn’t matter, what did any of it matter as his wife was dead and wouldn’t be coming home. He was handsome, almost delicately so, his dark skin and darker eyes flawless as the statue of a forgotten god. O'Neill had gazed at a photograph of them together for a full minute, thinking how different they looked, laughing with their arms around one another in the sunlight, Sha’re’s dark hair carelessly loose, eyes crinkled with laughter. Why did someone strangle a girl like that and leave the money in her purse, the shoes on her feet, the dress on her body. Had it fed into the murderer’s power hunger enough to steal her life with his bare hands? Was that why he hadn’t raped her? Forensics had found very little. One fair human hair that O'Neill was almost certain came from Jackson. One dark human hair that came from her husband. Nothing about her altered except everything, except that her life had been taken from her without her consent. 

Today, Kawalsky had gone to interview Ivana Novakovich’s boyfriend in custody, trying to learn something that might tie her murder to Sha’re’s. O'Neill’s purpose in coming here was a lot less clear. He wanted to talk to Jackson again, he was positive about that, he just wasn’t sure if it had anything to do with the case. He had done some checking about the guy’s trust fund and everything he had learned had made him uneasy. 

As he turned in through the gates he noticed the other vehicle, the dark, deliberately anonymous car of the government spook. His hackles rose just at the sight of it, blinded momentarily by reflections of the past, the baking heat of the desert and a bullet from his special ops issue revolver punching a perfect hole in the back of a man’s skull. Such a neat entry wound to blow out a man’s face, a mess of blood and brains on the floor. Dangerous to the security of a government they were working with at the time, that was what they were told. Even then he’d suspected it was one of the good guys they had sent him to kill. Arms deals and the free flow of oil and general political expediency making it useful at the time to get into bed with men to whom human rights were a couple of words in a dictionary and nothing else. It was all right for the people in Washington. They didn’t see the consequences of the actions they rubber-stamped, they didn’t feel the life blood of the men they ordered murdered ever spatter against their skin.

O'Neill blinked and found himself parking with great precision in the courtyard of Gray Gables. The gardener was out of sight today but he’d interview him later. Make it look as if coming here had a purpose other than to see Jackson. He’d been uneasy about just dropping him off the day before yesterday, not trusting to Tony’s good humor and only partially relieved when Maria had assured them both that Mister Ballard-Green was out.

As he reached the door, his hackles rose again and he turned to look at two people who were unashamedly military, one a marine, one Air Force, both of them ramrod straight and in uniform, a man and a woman, one brown-haired, one blonde. It was all he could not to curl his lip at them. 

“Can I help you?” he enquired with heavy sarcasm.

“And you are?” the man retorted. 

The woman was more conciliatory, holding out a hand. “Captain Samantha Carter. This is Colonel Robert Makepeace.”

“Detective Jack O'Neill.”

“Why are you here?” Makepeace demanded.

“I’m investigating a murder. Why are you here?”

“Murder?” Carter blinked in concern. “Does Doctor Jackson live here?”

Now his hackles were up in earnest. “I doubt he’ll want to see you.”

“We have clearance from the Pentagon,” Makepeace told him.

O'Neill shrugged as Maria opened the door. “You could have a signed affidavit from the Almighty for all he cares.” He gave Maria his most dazzling smile, elbowing his way through the door ahead of Makepeace, who was slow, and Carter who was too polite to shove. “Doctor Jackson’s expecting me.” As he stepped into the hall, he met Tony, who was stumbling across the marble flags in a way that unmistakably spoke of too much alcohol imbibed the night before. He was unshaven and red-eyed and had a hand to his head. At the sight of O'Neill he went to block him, anger immediately flashing in his eyes, and a hint of something else as well, a flickering glance up the elegant staircase that made O'Neill’s concern spike like an EKG. O'Neill said rapidly: “Stall those two. They’re military.”

Tony was so surprised at finding himself allied with O'Neill that he took a step backwards and O'Neill darted past him, jerking his head meaningfully at the strangers behind him as he did so. Then he was taking the stairs two at a time while Tony was blustering angrily at the strangers, his hangover clearly feeding his bad temper, while Maria was quietly insistent that Doctor Jackson did not have an appointment with them, that he was seeing Mister O'Neill now, that it was all arranged, si, yes, they must wait in the morning room, please to make themselves comfortable. Missus Ballard-Green must be informed of them arriving and the coffee she could be brought to them. Cream and sugar, yes? Tony’s voice was a smoky baritone, Makepeace’s determined but unavailing. The woman, Carter, had a nice voice, trying to explain politely and more tactfully than her CO that their business was urgent and official, but he wasn’t in the mood to feel friendly. Whatever they wanted here he doubted it would be good for Jackson, and he wouldn’t have put it past them to be mixed up in Sha’re’s murder as well. 

He rounded another curve in the staircase, trying to work out which room it was. Jackson had shown him his window from the courtyard, pointed up to a place high up with the drapes still drawn. O'Neill had always had a good sense of direction and it was useful now, as he went up another curve of the staircase then strode along the carpeted corridor past marble statues in unnecessary alcoves and mirrors larger than his car. 

He tapped on what he hoped was the right door, then at the sound of something mumbled incoherently, turned the handle. The room was in darkness and stank of recent sex and other even less pleasant odors. His nose wrinkled in disgust. There was a heady whiff of alcohol in the air too. If this was Jackson’s room, he seemed to have been partying, either repeatedly with his right hand or in company, since O'Neill had dropped him back on the doorstep. O'Neill felt something flicker through him that felt suspiciously like anger, and strode across the room, his foot connecting with a bottle that rolled away, tinkling fearfully.

“There are government spooks here to see you.” He tossed the words in the direction of what he took to be the bed, feeling his way cautiously past the hard edges of furniture to grope for the drapes. He yanked them back and they sped along their runners lightly while behind him daylight flooded the room. 

Jackson had been lying on his front, his head turned towards the window, and immediately buried his face in the pillow, making an incoherent bleat of protest. One look at him told O'Neill he was not just hungover like his stepbrother but so far out of things as to be on a different planet. As light followed behind the speeding drapes, O'Neill stared in horror at the mess that was the bed and the man on it. Jackson seemed to have puked up everywhere before wetting himself. The comforter was on the floor, the sheets a cold wet tangle of ammonia-scented cotton.

“Christ.” O'Neill hurried over to where Jackson was ineffectually flailing around. It took him a moment to realize he was reaching for his glasses and caught his wrist. “Trust me. Some things are better left a blur.” He peeled the dazed man off the mess that was his bed linen, pulling back the sheets to find that Jackson was naked and smelling strongly of what O'Neill suspected was probably someone else’s come. “Where’s the shower?” he demanded.

Jackson pointed blearily ahead of him and O'Neill saw that there was a door behind the ornate mirror reflecting the dissolute scene. He hauled Jackson out of bed and yanked him unceremoniously towards the bathroom door. He was dazed and slippery, not easy to hold, and O'Neill had to put an arm around his waist. Daring a glance at his body he was struck by how delicate his bones were underneath their bruises, Jackson’s wrists and ankles significantly narrower than his own. The legs looked even longer bare, shapely and slender, as was the rest of him. But he could hardly walk in a straight line and O'Neill had to exert more force than he wanted to keep him upright. It was a relief to get him into the bathroom. He pushed him up into the shower cubicle and helped him to slide down the tiles into the corner, angling the showerhead down onto him then switching it on. Jackson gave a convulsive twitch as the water hit him and O'Neill grimly cranked up the temperature from cold to comfortably warm. He dropped the soap into Jackson’s lap and said shortly, “Clean yourself up.” 

As he stripped the bed with the efficiency of any parent who had seen a child through innumerable bouts of bed wetting and illness, he had to admit if only to himself that he was mad with Jackson, not for getting drunk or overdosing on his medication, but for having sex. He tried to throw open the windows to let out the scent of semen but found they’d been fixed and barred so that they would only move six inches, to stop any attempts at suicide presumably. He was haunted by visions of Jackson relentlessly jerking off like some pervert in the park, or, worse, drunkenly enjoying himself with the same son-of-a-bitch who had beaten him up two days before. Dumping the bed linen in the bathtub he twisted the faucets savagely, a stifled yelp from the shower telling him he had probably just made the shower water run cold. Not caring, he scrubbed angrily at the sheets, washing a beige and yellow coil of puke and piss down the drain.

The rubber sheet around the mattress suggested this wasn’t the first time that drugs, alcohol or mental incapacity had left Jackson incontinent but at least it meant the mattress itself had been kept dry. Swearing, O'Neill searched for fresh linen, surprising himself, when on finding a nervous maid in the corridor he imperiously demanded the hot water and wash cloth she was carrying before sending her off to fetch him clean sheets.

In between calling into the bathroom to remind Jackson to wash himself thoroughly and to demand reassurances he hadn’t drowned, O'Neill washed, disinfected, and then dried the rubber sheet, finishing just as the nervous maid arrived with an armful of linen. This ritual had clearly taken place before as she seemed surprised that the sheets had already been rinsed, giving O'Neill a look of surprised approval as if she had not until that moment even realized that the male of the species knew how to remove a wet sheet or make a bed. Still in the same mood of angry efficiency, he remade the bed, making a point of smoothing out all creases on the fitted sheet and noticing that someone had been reading their Martha Stewart diligently enough to have adopted those little ties she advocated on the inside of the duvet cover. The maid darted a nervous glance at Jackson, visible through the cracked open shower door, still huddled in the corner of the cubicle, shivering as the water ran over him and incompetently soaping himself. She scooped the wet linen from the bath into a waterproofed basked on wheels which she wheeled into a reproduction art deco elevator across the corridor that O'Neill had been assuming was a closet.

“Wash your hair,” he snapped at Jackson as he finished putting on fresh pillowcases and making the bed.

The bedroom was cold now, a stiff breeze blowing in from the outside world and the maid looked at the windows in concern before glancing back at Jackson. Had she been older or braver no doubt she would have suggested that the combination of chill air and tepid water was a recipe for pneumonia. O'Neill refused to meet her eye and she meekly collected up overflowing ashtrays, empty whiskey and beer bottles without a word. O'Neill snatched up the papers and photographs that were scattered across the room and shoved them into an abandoned briefcase while the maid hastily vacuumed cigarette ash from the carpet and straightened cushions on reproduction chairs. Within a matter of minutes, the room was aired, cleaned, empty of beer bottles, whiskey bottles and cigarette ash and smelt of the leaf mould of a damp morning instead of the bitter musk of sex. When the military got here they would find nothing to betray the chaos that had greeted O'Neill on entering the room, except Jackson himself, of course. The man carried his own chaos with him.

Striding into the bathroom, this time O'Neill shut the door behind him and pulled open the shower cubicle. Jackson was huddled in the corner, long legs drawn up. The red and mauve bruises mottling his skin gave him the look of some exotic alien. There were more of them than before, just as he’d expected, clear finger marks on Jackson’s upper arms and, ominously, purple markings up his legs and up the back of his thighs, not to mention clear finger bruises around his hip bones. The love bites on his neck were dark crimson and showed the clear impression of teethmarks. Through the veil of the shower spray, O'Neill could see Jackson’s genitalia, a neat bundle between his legs, and the curve of his buttocks. There was the edge of marks on what could be seen of his ass, unmistakable new red and mauve bruises over older yellow and blue ones. O'Neill gritted his teeth because there was no ‘perhaps’ about the nature of Jackson’s relationship with his step ‘brother’ now. His body looked like a diagram of grip and impact marks for different sexual positions. 

Jackson had been trying to obey him, blearily rubbing the bar of soap into his hair that had now formed a white scum of suds which trickled down his bare shoulder. Swearing under his breath, O'Neill counted to ten then began to strip off his own clothes, not bothering to hide his annoyance as he unlaced shoes, pulled off socks, unbuttoned pants. It felt strange, dangerous and irresponsible to take off his gun, but he did it all the same, putting it down on the edge of the bath before he finally yanked off his shirt, leaving himself barefoot and wearing only his briefs. Wrapping a towel around his waist to protect his underwear, he stepped into the shower and picked up the shampoo.

“What the hell happened last night?” _And the night and day before that by the look of you._ From a needlessly ornate bottle he squeezed some herbal remedy shampoo into his hands.

Jackson looked up at him in confusion. “Tony was…drunk.”

O'Neill tried to grit his teeth and found they were already gritted. He got that ‘drunk’ covered a lot of different things, like coked up or methed up to the point where Tony barely knew what or who he was doing. He couldn’t help wondering if Jackson’s current condition was his fault. He’d seen all the bruises on his upper body two days earlier and they had definitely increased since then. The ones on his lower body looked fresh as well, even if they were overlaid upon older marks. “Did he fuck you?”

Jackson turned his head away, more defensive than ashamed, determined not to have his lifestyle choice questioned even though as far as O'Neill could see ‘choice’ had never entered into it. “None of your business.”

“Your bedroom stinks like a brothel in a distillery.”

“It’s my life,” Jackson muttered rebelliously. 

“Well, you’re welcome to it.” O'Neill began to massage shampoo into his hair, not realizing until his hands touched the soft wetness of Jackson’s hair how intimate a gesture this was, because Jackson wasn’t his child or his dog, or someone so mentally incapacitated normal social taboos didn’t apply. He stopped, wondering what the hell to do then realized he had come too far to do anything except pretend this was the most natural behavior in the world. Jackson, strangely or fittingly, given the fucked-up through-the-looking-glass world that was his life, didn’t seem to think it particularly odd that a man he’d only met a couple of days earlier should be standing in the shower with him, washing his hair, while wearing only a borrowed towel over his white cotton briefs. For all his stubbornness, there was also that odd passivity about him. O'Neill wondered if trust, and a belief that people were fundamentally decent despite all manner of evidence to the contrary, could be an inherited characteristic. It had to come from nature in Jackson’s case because it sure as hell didn’t come from nurture.

The look Jackson gave him was tentative, not remotely afraid of O'Neill or his proximity on this occasion, just unsure if the man was still angry with him, ready to retort if criticized but hoping for something gentler in the older man’s eyes. O'Neill realized that Jackson was essentially reactive. Yell at him and he yelled back or froze you out or determinedly grabbed the upper hand by some act of defiance. Be nice to him and he was birthday cake frosting on a hot summer’s day. 

O'Neill carefully wiped the shampoo from Jackson’s forehead before it ran into his eyes and massaged it into his scalp gently. There had been vomit in his hair. It might not even have been his. It could have been Tony’s. This was no life for anyone, especially not someone with three PhDs. “There are some military people here to see you. Air Force, I think. Any idea why?”

Jackson darted him another look to see if he was still mad, soap trickling down his cheekbone. “Maybe.”

O'Neill reached for the shower head and washed out the shampoo, the soap trails soft white suds down Jackson’s curiously smooth skin. He had to stroke his hand through the hair to wash out the suds and images jolted into his mind of massaging Sara’s scalp with a new herbal shampoo while whispering sweet nothings in her ear. 

“Did you hack into their mainframe or something?”

Jackson’s tongue darted out to moisten his lips, despite the water trickling down his face. “No.”

Evasive and a little guilty, also a little pleased with himself. O'Neill thought Jackson must have been a brat and a half when still a kid, quibbling over syntax when asked if he’d broken that plate because he hadn’t actually broken it, the act of it hitting the floor had broken it, he’d just accidentally dropped it.

“Did you willingly receive illegal data obtained by someone else hacking into their mainframe?”

Jackson wrinkled his nose. “They stole it first.”

“Do you know how many years you can get for breaching national security?” O'Neill enquired conversationally.

“They’re supposed to work for us. They stole important artifacts from an archaeological dig and all Sarah did was retrieve our own data. They should give us a written apology and they ought to give us back our artifacts.”

“Well, knowing the military I wouldn’t hold your breath.” O'Neill reached for the shower gel and then realized he couldn’t put his hands onto Jackson’s wet naked body without completely crossing the line between helpful friend and leering pervert. He put it into Jackson’s hands. “Wash yourself.”

Jackson was clumsy with the gel, squinting at it myopically then pouring it onto his palm in such profusion that it ran down his wrist. He sniffed at it cautiously then looked relieved. “I like this one.” He slapped the gel on with more coordination than O'Neill had expected and he realized he must be coming out of the drugged or drunken stupor now. 

“Where are your clothes?”

Jackson looked up at him. “I don’t really have any.”

“What?” O'Neill put the shower attachment in his hand. 

“Tony burns them. That’s why I was keeping a pair of his old pants and an old shirt hidden under the mattress – so I don’t look like a complete fruitcake when people call – but after your visit he took them away and burned those too. It’s a safety precaution on his part. So I can’t go outside. I buy myself clothes over the Internet. He puts them in the incinerator and threatens to rip out my modem.” Jackson wrinkled his nose again. “That’s part of the computer, right?”

“Usually. How bad is your taste in clothes anyway?” 

Jackson gave him a surprisingly sweet smile. “According to Sarah, pretty bad.”

It was too disconcerting to hear the name ‘Sara’ on Jackson’s lips. “That’s my wife’s name.” He hadn’t meant to say that.

Jackson gazed at him, mouth open in an ‘o’ of confused dismay and O'Neill saw the quick rise and fall of his bare chest. “You’re married?” That sounded like accusation. Jackson hastily lowered his gaze, clearing his throat to say much more casually, “I mean…you’re married? Of course you’re married. Why wouldn’t you be…?”

“Separated. Soon to be divorced.” O'Neill got to his feet. “I’m a maverick cop cliché.” The towel around his waist was sodden and as he backed out of the shower he pulled it from around his waist, his briefs were wet too, transparent with it. He saw Jackson look at his crotch and then quickly look away. O'Neill said: “Do you have underwear?”

“In the top left hand drawer of the bureau.” Jackson gestured vaguely at the bedroom. 

“I need to borrow some and you need to put some on.”

“If you wear my boxer shorts does it mean we’re engaged?”

O'Neill rolled his eyes. “No, but it does mean I’m going to be wishing you were a briefs man all damned day.”

He found the underwear without difficulty, groaning as he saw the boxer shorts. He hated those things. Sara had always been trying to persuade him to buy them but they made him feel naked and he was sure he jiggled around more when wearing them. He picked a light blue pair for himself and a darker blue for Jackson, realizing in some dismay he was trying to find a pair that would match his eyes. He dressed quickly, worried about the maid coming back in and finding him naked in Jackson’s bedroom. Jackson was still washing himself with a little more competence now, only slightly distracted by the spray pattern the water made as it fountained from the showerhead. Perhaps it was the rest of the world that was out of step and they should all just knock back their happy pills and chill.

A search in the antique closets and chests of drawers revealed that Jackson had been speaking no more than the truth. There were no clothes except for boxer shorts, socks, blue toweling robes and a drawer full of pajamas. Neither of the two pairs of shoes had any laces. He’d heard of unbalanced husbands doing this, cutting off their wife’s hair or hiding or burning her clothes so she couldn’t leave the house. Was that really all this was about? Sexual jealousy on the part of Tony Ballard-Green? Or was he genuinely afraid that if he were given shoes and clothes, Jackson would go and throw himself in the nearest river or play chicken on the freeway?

O'Neill went to the doorway and looked around for the maid, relieved to find her hovering uncertainly in the corridor. “Can you get me some coffee? For Doctor Jackson? As strong and black as you can make it.”

She nodded at once, even giving O'Neill a glimmer of a smile. “I bring him lunch?”

O'Neill looked at his watch and it was long past lunchtime. “Would he eat it?”

She looked uncertain how to answer that. “He is a good boy,” she offered at length. “Very considerate. But he is a little forgetful sometimes.” He got the impression the servants were used to covering up for Jackson, telling Tony him the younger man had eaten meals when he hadn’t, perhaps. He could imagine Ballard-Green having days when he decided Jackson had to eat all his greens and would stand over him until he did. The two clearly had serious issues about power and its limits.

“All brains and no sense.” O'Neill smiled at her. “Just get him some coffee for now. I can take him out for a meal. Does he have any clothes?” 

He still hoped Tony might just have hidden them somewhere, asked the maids to store them in a different closet perhaps, but the woman seemed surprised by the question. 

“Outside clothes? No. No. He is an invalid. He not need to go outside. Outside very dangerous for Doctor Jackson. He must rest. Keep quiet. No shouting. Very very quiet.” She went off to get the coffee and he thought about the way Ballard-Green had told Jackson to get dressed but hadn’t left him any clothes. A set up for the audience. Jackson was supposed to come down those stairs in his pajamas then when Tony asked him where his clothes were tell the nice policeman that his wicked step brother had burned them. A likely story indeed. O'Neill wondered how crazy Jackson really was. Then he wondered how sane he would be if he was forced to live like this. He also wondered what was actually in those damned pills.

He could hear the spooks downstairs, still arguing with Ballad-Green who was threatening to call his lawyer, the local judge, the mayor, and for all O'Neill could tell, the National Guard. Makepeace sounded clipped and angry, the woman, Carter, more conciliatory and reasonable:

“…we just want to talk to Doctor Jackson about some artifacts he and Doctor Gardner excavated in Egypt. It would only take a few minutes…”

“Then you can make an appointment and see him when his doctor and his lawyer are here to supervise…”

“Look, your stepbrother is in serious trouble and if you want to help him…”

“Don’t threaten me, Major Makepeace.”

“That’s Colonel Makepeace…”

Wondering grimly if Tony Ballard-Green ever kept to the ‘no shouting’ rule the maid had mentioned, O'Neill went into the bedroom and closed the door. Looking around the room now, it was a model of order by comparison. There were still books piled on every flat surface and pieces of paper sticking out of most of them, but everything else was tidy. 

His cellphone rang and O'Neill looked at it in irritation before curtly saying: “O'Neill.”

“Jack, it’s me.” Kawalsky. He sounded a little breathless. The way he did when he’d made progress.

“You’ve got something? You spoke to Novakovitch’s boyfriend?” 

“Yes. Name of Andrews. I don’t think he did it. Also, I got that information back from the geographical profiler and I don’t think we’re looking at a serial killer either. I know it’s too early to say for sure, but this guy says that with serial killers most murders take place within two miles of the killer’s home. It’s never so close that it’s on their doorstep but it’s still usually within a few miles of their home.”

“Go on.” Listening to Kawalsky what O'Neill was really noticing was the excitement in his voice. He’d been like that once. Been onto clues like a terrier with a rat, puzzling it out, wanting to find out how everything fitted together. Now he just saw Sha’re lying on that slab in the morgue, another pretty girl who worked hard, did no harm to anyone, was nice to children and animals, and ended up dead because of some worthless prick who they would probably catch eventually but what difference did it make when they could never give her life again?

“Ivana was killed thirty five miles away from Sha’re. The profiler told me to go and take a look at the scene of the crime during daylight if I thought the girls were stalked and then after nightfall at the time of the murder to see if they could have attracted someone randomly. Well, I did it last night –”

“I thought you were going straight home?”

“I checked my email before I left and this guy in Vancouver had given it to me chapter and verse so I figured I should take a look around while it was fresh in my mind. Anyway, the houses don’t fit the usual M.O. for a random attacker. Ivana was killed in her apartment. Sha’re was killed on the street. Neither apartment was visible from the street. Ivana lived on the third floor. There was no sign of a forced entry and no window left open near a fire escape that would have provided easy access. There was nothing about either case to suggest it was spur of the moment. I talked to the FBI as well and –”

“How?” O'Neill demanded. “It hasn’t crossed a state boundary and there’s no child involved.”

“My brother’s girlfriend works there.” Kawalsky sounded a little shame-faced but O'Neill had a memory of himself being like this, calling in favors from old friends, asking for access to records that wouldn’t otherwise be available to him.

“She asked a profiler to take a look at the case too and he said he’s seeing nothing to suggest any kind of fetish approach. The body wasn’t artistically arranged. The clothing wasn’t taken as a trophy. Her jewelry was left on the body.”

“So why was she killed?” O'Neill hoped he hadn’t got lazy in his thinking but when he saw a dead girl who hadn’t obviously been killed by her husband or boyfriend, he tended to assume the reason was because she’d been raped before she was murdered, when it turned out she hadn’t been raped, he assumed it was because she’d been robbed, and when she hadn’t been robbed he assumed it was because the guy had some kind of ritual attached to the murder, but nothing had been taken from the body to suggest that and nothing had been done to conceal her identity or to cover up the fact a murder had been committed. Sha’re had been identified immediately by a neighbor and her husband had been suspected as soon as her identity was known.

“The guy at the FBI said maybe someone just wanted the girl dead. He asked if her life was insured and who’d benefit. But it wasn’t. Not Sha’re’s anyway. Farouk had life insurance, which he took out as soon as she told him she might be pregnant so if anything happened to him she and the baby would be provided for.”

“He did?” O'Neill stared at the cell in disbelief. “Why didn’t he mention that?”

“He didn’t think it was important.” He could imagine Kawalsky rolling his eyes. “He doesn’t seem to get that the main raft of the prosecution’s case is going to be that he resented keeping his wife and didn’t want the financial burden of a child as well. The life insurance kind of shoots that theory to hell. And I spoke to Sha’re’s father this morning and he is adamant his son-in-law isn’t a murderer. Not good enough for his daughter: yes. A killer: no. He says Farouk has ‘the soul of a poet’. He says only if she was unfaithful would Farouk have killed her and his daughter would never be unfaithful. I pointed out he could have wrongly suspected her but Kasuf finds the idea that anyone could think Sha’re would ever be unfaithful incomprehensible. Also, that’s the theory with Ivana and her boyfriend and I’m not buying it as a coincidence. Not two girls who worked at the same place both being strangled by their SO’s after wrongly being suspected of having an affair.”

O'Neill almost said aloud then what he was thinking, which was that Kawalsky was a good cop and if his instincts were telling him Farouk hadn’t done it then Farouk hadn’t done it. He’d thought the same thing himself this morning but he no longer trusted his instincts, grief had dulled them along with everything else.

“So, why do you think they were killed?”

“I think they were killed because of who they were. Not random victims. Not killed by their partners. I think we’re into Agatha Christie territory, Jack.”

“Something they knew? Something they’d witnessed?” O'Neill felt his eyebrow shooting skywards. So few crimes were committed for those reasons. It was invariably for personal gain, life insurance, to stop earnings being divided between another, an impending divorce, or because of jealousy, anger, simmering resentment, or else there were the random psychos and serial killers who got their kicks snuffing out the lives of others then blamed the police for not stopping them sooner, the women for permitting themselves to be killed.

“Let’s just say I think you’re right to follow up the Jackson leads. I think it could be because they worked at that house. Either because Jackson is insane and he killed them because his meds weren’t working or because of something that happened there which they knew about. I’ve been making some enquiries about that hospital he was in. I want to know how crazy that kid really is.”

O'Neill felt a sudden chill. “Let me come with you.”

“You’re busy interviewing Jackson.” 

Yes, he was. And without Kawalsky. He knew he should have brought Kawalsky with him but he hadn’t and now Kawalsky was covering for him, pretending O'Neill was following a lead and not his dick or his curiosity or whatever it was that had brought him here today. “Be careful.” 

For once, Kawalsky didn’t laugh at his concerns and his tone was gentle as he said: “You too, Jack.” O'Neill wondered if it was only bad conscience that made him think Kawalsky was also warning him not to fall in love with a murder suspect. Femme fatales read better in Raymond Chandlers than they worked out in real life, especially when the femme fatale was a certifiably unbalanced pretty boy who was already being fucked on a far too regular basis by his equally unbalanced stepbrother.

Putting away his cellphone and taking one of the dark blue robes and blue pajamas from the closet and drawer, O'Neill went back into the bathroom. Jackson was looking clean and awake now, and had successfully managed to wash off all the shower gel, but his bruises looked no less angry for being wet and he seemed too woozy to get up unaided. Sighing, O'Neill put the clothes onto the heater, picked up a couple of fluffy white towels and advanced towards him. He switched off the shower and Jackson looked up at it in surprise as if waiting for the water to issue forth once more. 

“What medication is it you’re on?” O'Neill enquired.

“I don’t know.” Jackson gave him another of those unexpectedly sweet smiles. “But it doesn’t mix with whiskey. I used to research it a lot – the drugs they gave me, argue with the doctors about it. But they just tell you they know best and stick another needle in your vein.”

O'Neill held out a hand and when Jackson grabbed it, hauled him to his feet. He was surprisingly light and flopped against O'Neill clumsily. For a moment they were close enough to kiss, he could feel Jackson’s breath on his mouth, see right into his eyes. Droplets glistened on impossibly long eyelashes. O'Neill wondered if he had ever before seen eyes so big or so blue. Then he collected himself and quickly wrapped a towel around Jackson’s waist, knotting it by his bony hips, then wrapped him in a bath sheet, rubbing it gently across his body, the way he’d dried his son when he was a toddler, so miraculously perfect, so painfully fragile. Trying to keep his voice matter-of-fact, he said, “Do you have a bladder infection? Do you need me to pick you up some antibiotics.”

Jackson looked down in confusion at where his penis would have been if it hadn’t been obscured by several yards of warm towel. “I don’t think so.”

“You wet the bed,” O'Neill reminded him helpfully as he handed him a smaller towel. “Dry your hair.” 

Jackson looked affronted. “That wasn’t me. That was Tony.” He rubbed the towel ineffectually across his hair the way children brushed their teeth, half-hearted but reluctantly obedient.

O'Neill realized that if he’d known that he wouldn’t have wanted to touch the sheets. Which was absurd because the urine of one strange guy or another, what difference did it make? Except with Jackson it had felt like cleaning up after a family member, with Tony it was just disgusting.

Jackson shrugged. “It’s like wild dogs, you know. With meat they can’t finish but don’t want anyone else to eat. He’s not a very evolved person.”

O'Neill automatically went on rubbing him dry with the towel while he mind wrestled with what Jackson was telling him. “Are you saying that after he fucks you, he…?”

“I’m all the bad things he’s not allowed to do. His cache of secret vices.” Still, Jackson stood there and let him dry him, that strange trust again. Seeing the shock in O'Neill’s eyes, he shrugged. “He doesn’t do it very often. Only when he feels threatened. He wasn’t expecting you to take me to the station with you. That probably set him off. He’s been a little crazy ever since my birthday.”

O'Neill abruptly pushed him away, the anger spiking. “Do you have any idea how sordid your life is? Do you think because you’re not living in a tenement somewhere with rats under the sink that this is acceptable? For Christ’s sake, Jackson, this isn’t the way life is meant to be!”

“It’s Daniel.”

“What?”

“My name isn’t ‘Jackson’. It’s ‘Daniel’.” His gaze was steady now, blue eyes full of intelligence, strangely dignified despite the way he was wearing only a towel. “And like you said yesterday, I don’t know what ‘normal’ is. This isn’t my country and this isn’t my home. I was born in Egypt. I was happy in Egypt. We only came here to visit because my parents didn’t want the artifacts they’d excavated wrongly displayed. They died over here but this was never my home, okay? Nick took me on digs with him. We lived in tents. We traveled all over the world. We were happy. Then his brother got sick so he came back to see him and we got stuck here too. And Nick went crazy and I ended up living with Tony and Zinnia. So, that’s what I know. I know Egypt, and digs, and I know college, and digs, and I know psychiatric hospitals with bars on the window, and I know Tony and his world, and his world is better than the hospital.”

“How can his world be better than anything?” O'Neill demanded, barely resisting the urge to point out that this room had bars on its windows too.

Jackson continued to look at him levelly. “I don’t like institutions.”

O'Neill hissed at him: “He beats you, he rapes you...”

This time it was Jackson who pulled away angrily. “He doesn’t ‘beat’ me. I’m not a carpet. And it isn’t ‘rape’. It isn’t… It’s not what you think. We just fight sometimes.”

“And the sex?”

Jackson shrugged. “It’s just something he needs to do.”

“Don’t you care?” The urge to take Jackson by the shoulders and shake him until his teeth rattled was almost overwhelming.

Jackson looked at him unblinkingly. “No, I don’t care. It’s not important.” 

“What is important?” O'Neill couldn’t keep the exasperation out of his voice but he did want an answer all the same.

“The past and its preservation. The truth and uncovering it. The value of human life.” He looked thoughtful, oddly peaceful. “The power of words. The way dust and stone and the tiny scratching of a dead scribe in wet clay can tell us that we’re all the same, all of us with the same hopes and dreams and fears, and always have been even thousands of years ago, so maybe always will be.”

“And you presumably just a single insignificant grain in the shifting sands of time?”

Jackson looked him up and down. “You’re cute when you’re angry.”

“And you’re annoying when you’re cute.” O'Neill grabbed the clothes from the heater and marched into the main room, Jackson’s huge bedroom-come-workroom with its antique mirrors and dark blue mottled walls all hung around with masks and fragments of baked clay and painted silk and scraps of colored papyrus. The rugs on the floor looked priceless and no doubt every piece of furniture in the room was a bona fide antique but wouldn’t anyone with a modicum of self-respect rather sleep in a bus shelter than prostitute himself for this?

Jackson followed him, wearing only the towel around his waist now, hair half dry and spiking in an unruly manner. In the daylight from the undraped windows the bruises showed their colors better, all those rainbow shades of fresh and faded pain.

“Don’t you have any money of your own?” He knew the answer to that question but he needed to hear that Jackson knew it too.

“It’s in trust for me.” Jackson met his gaze unflinchingly. “Held until I’m thirty.”

“You’re thirty now.”

“I know.” Jackson’s gaze strayed to the door and O'Neill couldn’t read his expression. “I don’t think I’ll have to live like this much longer.” There was no hope in his voice, only resignation and O'Neill felt chilled. He crossed to the windows and closed them.

“Will you leave then?” he demanded.

Jackson looked at him for a long moment and then deliberately undid the towel from around his waist and dropped it. O'Neill tried not to be fazed by his nakedness but had to admit he was. The slight tinge of color to Jackson’s cheekbones told him that the guy was having to overcome his shyness to make a point but, having let it all hang out, he had certainly taken the initiative in the conversation. O'Neill opened his mouth to say something else but then found himself staring at Jackson’s body, thinking simultaneously how perfectly proportioned and how bruised it was. When Jackson turned around, he was given a clear view of his rear, the curve of his ass, and as he bent to pick up the boxer shorts, a disconcerting sighting not only of the bruises on his ass but of the dark cleft between his buttocks. He could see where Tony had held him by the hips, could imagine the angle at which Jackson had been penetrated. He almost minded that less than the thought of Tony’s fingers claiming possession, stroking his thigh, scissoring him open, making him ready….

Feeling angry, curiously aroused, and very disconcerted, O'Neill averted his eyes until Jackson turned around and looked at him unblinkingly as he stepped into his boxers then pulled on his pajamas, doing up each button of the too-large shirt with absolute precision. He had an artist’s fingers, long and tapering to a perfect point, and he was surprisingly dexterous. O'Neill supposed you had to learn to claim your own dignity by wrong-footing others when your sanity was signed away from you and you were declared unfit to make your own decisions, to rule your own life, even to bar others from touching you or examining you, or injecting drugs into your veins you hadn’t asked for and didn’t want. When your stepbrother could and would fuck you any time he felt like it, maybe this was the only way to keep your self-respect, to make yourself naked as a weapon and claim consent was irrelevant because, after all, it was only sex.

As Jackson belted his robe like a challenge tossed down, O'Neill met his gaze and swallowed. His eyes truly were extraordinarily blue and his lashes the longest he had ever seen on a man. He had a child’s coloring, the rosy lips, creamy pallor, and glints of gold in his shorn hair, but the expression in his eyes was of innocence long since betrayed, the trust wary now, like a puppy kicked once too often. O'Neill said, “I…” then realized he had no idea how to finish his sentence.

A knock on the door announced the maid and O'Neill was grateful for the interruption. She was carrying a silver tray and cups of delicate bone china. She looked around for a flat surface upon which to set it and Jackson hastily cleared a place for her on a table on which books formed a lost civilization of their own of fallen walls and towers. O'Neill noticed there was a teapot as well as a coffee pot and six cups.

“We have visitors on their way?” Jackson asked. He had a beautiful smile, O'Neill noticed, when it was genuine, such as now, reassuring and warm. No wonder the maid practically melted under its influence.

“They come soon, I think. Missus Ballard-Green she say it better if you see them today.”

Jackson shrugged. “I don’t mind, Rosalita. Just let Officer O’Neill and I have our coffee first.” He gave her a look from under his eyelashes. “It’s not decaf is it?”

Wow, those big blue eyes were effective, the begging look he was giving the maid would have melted a heart of marble. O'Neill wasn’t surprised when she darted a quick look over her shoulder and then leaned forward to whisper: “I use the wrong coffee just for you. But if you get pitter-patter heart and shaky hands Miss Ballard-Green she will know.”

“I’ll be good,” Jackson promised and, as she turned to leave, called after her: “And you’re an angel.”

O'Neill watched Jackson knock the coffee back like an alcoholic after a lost weekend. As he fetched his glasses for him, he said, “You’re not supposed to take stimulants with anti-depressants.”

Jackson snorted dismissively. “You’re not supposed to take alcohol either but that doesn’t stop Tony force-feeding me whiskey every other night.”

“Why don’t you leave?” He held out the glasses.

“And be committed again?” Jackson’s expression warned him to drop it but he took the spectacles from him and put them on, blinking in relief as the world came back into focus. He seemed to notice the bedroom for the first time, the clean bedding, the open drapes. “Thank you.” 

“You seem sane enough to me.”

Jackson put a hand up to his head. “Well, it comes and goes. Last night my skin dissolved and I saw a snake in the bed, which I’m presuming probably wasn’t real. I killed my dog when I was a teenager. I don’t remember doing it, but I woke up and there he was dead and his blood was all over me.” He gritted his teeth to prevent a shudder. “Maybe I’m dangerous. I don’t know for sure that I’m not. I loved my dog and I killed him so maybe I’m capable of knifing someone on the street I’ve never even met. I don’t know.”

O'Neill wanted to say more, to demand to be told how anywhere could be worse than a place where a drunken bully could force sex upon you any time he felt like it, use you as a punching bag, and piss on you afterwards. “What was so bad about the hospital?”

“I felt like a lunatic. When I felt anything at all. Most of the time I was on something that muffled…everything. I couldn’t work. I couldn’t think. Here, I feel like me. I can read. I can do research. And yes, from time to time the strain of having me around makes Tony temporarily blow a brain gasket, but he hasn’t killed me yet, and it’s still because of him that I’m here instead of back in that place with Winston screaming about the radioactive particles burning into his skin and Mary-Anne crying all damned day because the dead child in the chimney won’t talk to her.” He had his arms wrapped around his body. A safety mechanism to keep out the world, O'Neill presumed.

“What’s your doctor’s name?”

“Doctor Melvin Green.” Jackson’s lip curled. “He’s Zinnia’s brother. He hates me. Not that he’d ever admit it, but he really does. He got into trouble for misdiagnosing me when I was a teenager and now he thinks I’m an awkward bastard.”

“You are an awkward bastard,” O'Neill pointed out. 

Jackson gave him a withering look. “Oh, and you’re Mister How to Win Friends and Influence People, I presume?”

O'Neill shrugged. “No one ever locked me up in a psychiatric hospital.”

The younger man stared at him in disbelief for a moment and then his mouth twitched. “Bastard yourself,” he muttered.

It was all O'Neill could do to stop himself reaching out and ruffling his hair. He heard the sound of urgent footsteps on the stairs. “Ready for your Air Force interrogation?”

“Sure.” Jackson’s grin was downright mischievous. “We can double-team them.”

Remembering Jackson’s reaction to Doctor Fraiser, O'Neill warned him quickly: “One of them’s female. And pretty. Just so you’re warned.”

A tinge of color reddened Jackson’s pale cheek as he clearly remembered his performance with Doctor Fraiser as well. “I don’t get out much.” 

“I noticed.”

Then the door was opening and Makepeace was striding into the room. “Doctor Daniel Jackson?”

Jackson looked cherubic, all big blue eyes and open mouth. “Who wants to know?” To O'Neill, who thought he was getting to know him a little better, he looked only as sweet as a kitten five seconds before it sank its needle-sharp claws into your flesh but judging by the expression on her face Carter seemed to be fooled. 

“Colonel Robert Makepeace of the SGC. And this is Captain Samantha Carter, also of the SGC.”

Jackson did glance briefly at the woman, and O'Neill was glad he’d warned him because she certainly was pretty and, unlike Makepeace who was glaring at Jackson with ill-concealed annoyance, she was looking at Jackson with sympathy and admiration.

“Are you archaeologists?” Jackson waved them to a couch that was piled with books, darting a look at O'Neill as he did so.

Resisting the urge to roll his eyes, O'Neill obligingly got up and moved the books. Makepeace just glared at him suspiciously, but Carter gave him a nice smile and a ‘thank you’. 

“No, we’re not,” Carter sat down. “I’m a doctor of astrophysics and….”

“Well, I doubt I’ll be able to help you then.” Jackson strode to the door and held it open. “So nice to have met you. Goodbye.”

Makepeace got up, strode across the room and shut the door firmly before turning a look on Jackson that made O'Neill wander across to supervise. Jackson gave Makepeace a mirthless smile in return and O'Neill was reminded once again that Jackson worked on being annoying the way campanologists worked on their bell ringing. The archaeologist said sweetly, “I think you must have the wrong person. I specialize in Ancient Egyptology. I imagine your only interest in the pyramids would be to drop a bomb on them from a great height while missing your nighttime targets. Strangely enough, I have no interest in helping you with that particular endeavor.”

“We need your help.” 

O'Neill was certain those weren’t the words Makepeace had been about to say but Carter had used them and they stopped Jackson better than an elephant gun. He grimaced, wrestled internally, then looked across at her. “Why?”

The look she gave him was pleading and respectful. “Doctor Jackson, we know you’ve been working on a translation of the language that was in the tomb you and Doctor Gardner excavated.” 

Jackson sat on the arm of an antique chair and gave her a very direct look. “How do you know?”

Carter had the grace to look a little shame-faced. “We’ve been monitoring your email exchanges.”

Jackson’s eyes narrowed. “Have you ever been a patient in a mental institute, Captain?”

“No, I haven’t.”

“Well, if you had you’d know how important privacy is when you get it back again.”

“It’s a matter of national security,” Makepeace put in quietly.

Jackson barely glanced at him. “Bullshit. Thieves are thieves whoever they work for. The last time I checked I didn’t pay taxes so the government in charge could lie, cheat, and steal.”

“Why not?” O'Neill queried. “The rest of us do.”

“I’m serious.”

“You think I’m not?” O'Neill retorted.

“Lieutenant Colonel O'Neill has Issues with the past administration.” Makepeace glanced across at O'Neill. “I made a few phonecalls.” Having delivered that broadside, he turned back to Jackson. “But Colonel O'Neill’s ‘issues’ aren’t relevant to what we’re doing now.”

“ ‘Lieutenant Colonel O'Neill’?” Jackson turned to look at him in shock. “I thought you were a policeman?”

“I am a policeman. I quit the Air Force years ago. I’m Detective O'Neill, just like I told you.” He darted Makepeace a warning glare. “And I’d appreciate you remembering it.”

There was betrayal in Jackson’s eyes. O'Neill gazed back at him, half pleading half exasperated, not knowing exactly why it mattered so much that Jackson should continue to trust him, only that it definitely did. “What difference does it make?”

“I like policemen. They help people. They solve crimes. They rescue people from burning buildings. They get cats out of trees.”

“That’s firemen.”

Jackson refused to be diverted. “All soldiers do is kill other people. They have no other function. They’re like the guns they carry. One ugly purpose and no positive contribution.”

O'Neill saw Carter wince and felt sorry for her. “That isn’t why people join up.”

“They’re killing other people for world peace?”

“Sometimes, yes.” O'Neill didn’t know why he was defending a profession he had so emphatically rejected, but he found himself thinking of his grandfather’s medals from Omaha Beach and his old CO who would have died for any man in his command, and the dead he’d had to bury by starlight in the desert because there was no way to bring the bodies home, and all the poppies in the fields of Flanders. “Wilfred Owen was a soldier as well as Hannibal and Alexander. It’s not all conquest and destruction. Sometimes it’s just trying to keep things the way they are. Sometimes it’s about protecting the people you love and the people who are vulnerable to the cruelty of others.”

Jackson gave him a fierce look. “I don’t think there’s a problem in the world that can be solved by putting a bullet in it.”

“The writing on the wall of that tomb is very important, Doctor Jackson.” 

O'Neill had to admire Carter’s persistence. He didn’t think he was warming to her more than to Makepeace just because she was a good-looking woman. She really seemed to care about getting through to Jackson, not just making him give her the information she wanted or giving her back whatever he possessed that the Air Force needed, but making a mental connection with him, communicating with him one to one, equal to equal. She didn’t seem to just want his help, she seemed to want him to see the need to give it, as if his opinion mattered to her, as if she wanted his respect. Or perhaps he was just a sucker for big blue eyes.

Jackson looked back at her. “Why?”

“We can’t tell you that.” Makepeace said at once.

“There’s the door.” Another mirthless smile. “The way out is straight down the stairs and through the hall.”

“You’re the only person who seems to have any idea what it might mean.” Captain Carter had that terrier with a bone persistency that he’d always admired in people even if it did occasionally madden him to screaming point. 

“It’s a variant unlike any other hieroglyphic writing I’ve ever seen.” Jackson shrugged. “Doctor Gardner and I were looking forward to getting it carbon dated.”

Carter said crisply: “That’s what we couldn’t let you do.”

Makepeace looked at Carter in shock. “Captain…”

“Sir, we need his help.”

“Why?” Jackson crossed back over to the desk and sat on it, swinging one pajama clad leg. The robe was a little big for him and the sleeves came down so far only his fingertips were visible. The way he rolled up the sleeves of both robe and pajama jacket suggested he had done it so many times before he didn’t even notice he was doing it. O'Neill saw Makepeace notice the bruises on his wrists and frown. Jackson continued evenly: “That inscription has been sitting on that tomb walls for thousands of years. What’s so urgent about it?” As they hesitated he looked at O'Neill. “Why did you quit?”

“I didn’t like what I being paid to do.”

“What…thing were you in?”

“ ‘Thing’?”

“Were you killing people from the land, the air, or the sea?”

O'Neill faced him as if Jackson was Jiminy Cricket and the dead could talk. “I was killing them under cover of darkness in a balaclava with mud on my face and a silencer fitted to my Beretta. Mostly in the Middle East. A few in South America. A few in the eastern bloc.”

Carter murmured: “Special Operations…”

Shock did flicker briefly in Jackson’s eyes but the look he gave O'Neill was one of compassion, not disgust. He continued evenly though, after only a second to snatch a necessary breath: “So you know secrets then? Where the bodies are buried?”

“Yes.”

“But you’ve never told anyone? Not journalists or whistleblowers? Not even your wife?”

“No.” O'Neill could see where he was going with this now. Jackson’s mind seemed to move in elliptical patterns but that was just to throw off any pursuers, like a hare pursued by hounds. He knew exactly where he was heading the whole time and O'Neill was happy to meet him there: “It’s what I signed up for. I don’t break my word.”

Jackson looked across at Makepeace, no longer trying to be provocative. Despite the pajamas and the oversized blue robe, the bare feet and the bruises, it was difficult to see this young man as anything but sane. “So, you have empirical evidence that Detective O'Neill is a man of his word with whom even your grubbiest secrets are safe, and as you’ve read my emails I’m sure you’ve read my medical file. Whether I’m reliable or not, you can always deny everything afterwards and no one will believe me.”

“Sir, he’s right.” Carter gave Makepeace a begging look. “And we are short of time.”

Makepeace looked at Jackson for a long moment and then shrugged in defeat. “Okay, but you can’t breathe a word of this and if you do we’ll deny it and I’ll personally see you get locked up in an asylum where they throw away the key.”

“That would be so different from my present life, of course.” At a look from O'Neill Jackson cranked down the attitude a couple of points and gave Carter his attention. “So, why did the Air Force steal my artifacts?”

“Because if you’d carbon dated them you would have realized how old they are.”

O'Neill saw the light of excitement begin to shine in Jackson’s eyes. “Are you saying I was right?”

Carter nodded. “Yes, Doctor Jackson. Some of the earliest pyramids are far older than was originally imagined. We think you were right about a lot of things. The artifacts you and Doctor Gardner found were discovered near an earlier archaeological discovery of great significance. One the USAF has been trying to get to work for many decades.”

“To get to ‘work’?” Jackson looked at Carter as if it were her sanity in question. “You’re so hard up for weaponry in the Air Force these days you need to reactivate…ancient ballistas…?”

“Under some cover stones, an archaeologist called Langford found a stone ring made from a mineral that doesn’t exist on earth. The ring had strange writings on it. We also found a body underneath it and that body was…decorated with certain artifacts which have never been found in any other archaeological site…except for the tomb you and Doctor Gardner uncovered near Giza…”

For a certified crazy person Jackson’s mind certainly moved fast. “The writings on this…stone ring you describe, were they the same as the writing on the tomb Sarah and I uncovered?”

Carter shook her head. “No. We don’t think so.”

“Are they the same age?”

“Our scientists haven’t been able to give us a definitive date for either but they believe the ring is older than the tomb. However, the artifacts you uncovered do contain traces of the same element as the ring and…it isn’t an element we have ever previously found on Earth.”

O'Neill looked between Makepeace and Carter in unconcealed disbelief. “Are we talking space aliens here?”

Makepeace said doggedly, “That’s classified.”

Jackson was still studying Carter, her body language, the uncomfortable twisting of her fingers. “Why the urgency? These artifacts have lain in the ground for thousands of years, maybe even tens of thousands of years. Why do you need them translated now?”

Although the question had been addressed to Carter it was Makepeace who answered: “We can’t tell you that.” 

Jackson shrugged. “Then I can’t help you.”

Carter hastened to intervene: “We think the ring is some kind of…doorway. There was an inscription on the cover stones. We’ve managed to translate that. Sort of translate it anyway. Then there’s the writing on the tomb that you’ve been working on – illegally. You started to work on it but we pulled the rest of the data off the mainframe. This is the section you didn’t have access to and this is the translation our experts came up with.”

O'Neill watched as Jackson was handed a piece of paper and a photograph. He glanced at it then frowned and automatically reached for a pen. He wrote deftly, O'Neill noticed, without hesitation, crossing out words on the piece of paper with a dismissive flick of his fingers that held more than a hint of impatience. 

“…no, that’s not right. What were they using to translate this? Budge?” He handed the piece of paper back. “I’d need to refine the translation but I think that’s pretty much what it says.”

Carter read it through then hastily handed it to Makepeace. “It makes sense, sir. Which is more than Meyer’s translation did.”

Jackson was looking between them in amused disbelief. “You think your big stone ring is the gate used by ‘the sun god to journey from the stars’? What does that make the artifacts you stole from Sarah and I then? Alien weaponry?”

The shocked look Carter darted Jackson made O'Neill’s heart increase its rate alarmingly. His first thought was that he really didn’t need this weird shit now. He had a dead girl in the morgue, possibly another dead girl’s death linked to her, a guy with a thirty million dollar trust fund who might or might not be a murderer and might or might not be insane but who either way was definitely in need of someone’s help, and now the Air Force was deciding to drag alien artifacts into the mix. “Oh come on,” he protested, jerking a thumb at Jackson. “He’s supposed to be the one who has trouble separating reality from fantasy. What’s your excuse?”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Detective Lieutenant Colonel.”

O'Neill rolled his eyes at Jackson. “I told you, drop the ‘Lieutenant Colonel’ crap. I quit.”

Jackson put a hand up to his head in mock confusion. “What was that quote from the retired Italian naval commander to Eva Peron when she wanted to know why people still called her a whore even though she was now the first lady of Argentina? Something about: ‘They still call me an admiral even though I gave up the sea long ago…’”

“Yeah, very funny, but I didn’t ‘whore’ for the US Government.”

“Oh really?” Jackson gave him one of those very direct looks that so completely banished any doubts about his mental stability that O'Neill wondered how any doctor had ever dared to commit him. “So you didn’t do a lot of distasteful things you didn’t enjoy just for the money then?”

O'Neill glared at him. “I did it for… I believed in what I was… In the beginning it was different… And anyway, screw you! At least I got paid for putting out for Uncle Sam. When was the last time Tony gave you anything for your trouble except a black eye?”

“I’m mentally incompetent. What’s your excuse?”

Makepeace looked between them in disbelief. “Did I miss something? O'Neill, is this guy a suspect in your murder enquiry or…something else?”

“Oh, he’s something else all right.” O'Neill gave Jackson a last glare before looking back at Makepeace. “And no, if what you’re asking is if Jackson and I are –”

“It’s ‘Daniel’,” Jackson said, quietly stubborn. “And no, Colonel Makepeace, we’re not fucking.” He left a beat. “Yet.” 

O'Neill mentally counted to ten then turned back to Makepeace as if Jackson hadn’t spoken: “And if what you’re asking is if Doctor Jackson and I are in a relationship – none of your damned business. I don’t work for the Air Force any more.”

Makepeace held up his hands in a placating. “I just need to know the score so I know what I’m dealing with.”

“What you’re dealing with is…” O'Neill looked at Jackson and then beckoned to Makepeace. “Can I have a word with you outside?”

 

Daniel though it said a lot for O'Neill’s unconscious air of authority that Makepeace got up and followed him without a word. He knew O'Neill was going to tell Makepeace about Tony. O'Neill couldn’t move past that onto any other subject at the moment, too caught up in his righteous indignation, but it was old news and Daniel really thought the man should just let it go. What mattered was him not having to go back to the psychiatric hospital and Tony had almost given his word that wouldn’t happen after the incident with the orderly, which, although unpleasant at the time, Daniel was now thinking had definitely been worth it as it had gotten him out of White Towers.

“Doctor Jackson…?”

He turned to find Captain Carter gazing at him intently, fingers laced together so tightly her knuckles were white. 

“Yes?” He knew he’d made a complete idiot of himself over Doctor Fraiser at the station but he just hadn’t expected to see anyone quite that…attractive in a police examining room, but he was determined not to repeat his adolescent act today, even if Captain Carter was a lot more beautiful than he really thought any Air Force officer should be and had the biggest eyes he’d ever seen in his life…. But the thing to focus on here was that she was military and scientific and that made her a gun with a brain attached to it and nothing else.

“Are you old enough to remember the moon landings?”

He blinked at her in confusion. “I’ve seen archive footage.”

“Well, they were the defining moment of my childhood. I saw those astronauts walking on the surface of the moon and I knew I wanted to do that one day.”

Daniel looked at her curiously. “And have you?”

“No. I was turned down for NASA.”

“I’m sorry.” He was too. He had expected to be living in Egypt by now with a wife and children and all of them discovering together vital missing pieces in the story of that lost civilization. He knew how it felt to have had life walk on your dreams.

“I was moved to the Pentagon and asked to work on a project that had been in mothballs for years. It was all data and a lot of it didn’t make sense to me but finally they let me see what the data was about and then… then it was like the moon landings all over again. Have you ever fallen in love with an idea, Doctor Jackson?”

His heart quickened its beat because the wistful tone in her voice was one he had heard in his heart so many times before. “All the time.”

“I’m in love with the idea of what this artifact could represent, what it could mean, all the questions it could ask…. The proof that perhaps we’re not…”

He had no idea why he was so convinced she had been about to say ‘we’re not alone in the universe’ but nevertheless that was how that sentence ended in his mind. He looked at her again and it struck him that they could be siblings. Although she had chosen science and the military and he had chosen archaeology and insanity – or had insanity chosen him? – perhaps they weren’t so very different after all. He just hoped he wasn’t the Gollum to her Frodo. Someone who had already taken the path she was starting down. He tried to think of a tactful way to phrase it.

“Captain Carter, is anyone suggesting you ought to take a little time off?”

“Constantly.” She looked surprised that he should know. “But, of course, that’s the last thing I need to do right now.” She looked right at him. “Will you help me?”

Oh great. Here he was trying to be matter of fact and she was turning him into a knight on a white charger. He was getting the full force of big blue eyes turned on him and he could feel his resolve melting like snow under sunshine.

“If I can…” He tried to sound guarded and businesslike but it didn’t come across exactly like that going by the way her eyes lit up. “I really need to know more,” he added quickly.

“The Pentagon will only fund us until the end of this month if we can’t get the project to show some…tangible return for all the millions that have been invested in it. We only have even this month because General West stepped down and the new general is much more sympathetic to what we’re trying to do and…I think he feels sorry for me. He knows my father.” 

Daniel wondered if the unnamed new general felt sorry for Carter because he knew her father and her father wasn’t very nice to her or was cutting her extra slack because she was the daughter of a friend. It was strange to think of human beings making decisions to do with military organizations. They seemed like a machine that ought to be run by a computer not people with wives and dogs and children. He wanted to ask her about her father now, fascinated by all aspects of parenting and what it was exactly that he had lost under that cover stone all those years ago.

She put a hand up to her head. “This is my life’s work, Doctor Jackson. I’ve spent years on this. I managed to write a program that would take the place of what we think is a missing component. I’ve studied the properties of the minerals in the ring. I think I know what it does, but I can’t prove it because the people who are supposed to do their part haven’t done it. They just tell me the symbols on the ring aren’t hieroglyphic in origin and even though they’ve supposedly had a panel of experts working on it for years they haven’t found any language it resembles closely enough to make a guess at what the writings mean. And they haven’t even managed a good translation of the writing found with the ring.” She fixed her gaze on him despairingly. “I’m at my wit’s end. I need your help.”

Daniel had a sudden memory of Princess Leia saying ‘Help us, Obi Wan Kenobi, you’re our only hope….’ He had to bite his lip hard not to giggle but when he saw the look of…defeat in Carter’s eyes, not to mention the shadows under them, his desire to laugh died completely. “Why do you think I can help you?”

Carter wrapped her arms around herself and he recognized the gesture. She was rocking slightly on the chair and he wondered how much sleep she’d had in the past few weeks, or months. The uniform and the neat fair hair made her look tidy, controlled, focused. The body language spoke of someone on the point of unraveling. “When you’re a scientist everything is based on math. You try to eradicate the unprovable and the impossible. You take leaps in the dark, of course, you can’t be a good scientist without having some intuitive sense of the direction in which you’re meant to be heading, but you’re meant to be led by the data, not to make the data follow you. You understand?”

“I think so.”

“I think we’re all looking at this problem the wrong way. I think we’ve all been staring at it for so long that we can’t even see it any more. It needs a new pair of eyes, but Washington won’t let me bring in any more experts because of the security risk. They don’t want anyone to know how much money we’ve spent on something that is looking more and more as if it was…an object of worship. But your work in Egypt suggests you don’t mind looking at things in a different way and you don’t present a security risk because –”

“No one would believe anything I said anyway.”

Carter rose to her feet. “I just want you to look at the problem and tell me what you see.”

He gazed up at her, mentally making his excuses to O'Neill for caving in five minutes flat because a pretty woman had given him a begging look and asked him for his help. Citing old-fashioned chivalry would probably just get him one of those incredulous-exasperated looks. Citing helping a fellow human being in need might not get him very far either – he suspected the milk of human kindness had gone a little sour for O'Neill as far as the USAF was concerned. He decided that scientific curiosity would work though and anyway he was curious. 

But when he got to his feet he felt suddenly uncertain, he didn’t have any clothes to wear except pajamas and a robe. He didn’t want to turn up at some military compound looking like Arthur Dent. “I don’t have any clothes.” He looked around for O'Neill, suddenly feeling a little lost without him. Remembering how disoriented he’d been by his trip to the police station the day before he knew he couldn’t face a military installation with all the accompanying military protocols without ending up under a table somewhere. “O'Neill has to come too,” he said abruptly. “I’ll go with you if he comes as well.”

Carter bounded for the door like a gazelle. Wrenching it open to say a little breathlessly, “Doctor Jackson has agreed to look at it, Colonel, but he says Detective O'Neill has to come too.”

“What?” O'Neill strode back into the room and gave him one of those now almost comfortingly familiar looks of exasperation. “Do you think letting yourself get dragged into the major mind-fuck that is the US military is a good idea right now?”

Daniel pointed quickly at Captain Carter. “She needs my help.”

“Oh Jeez.” O'Neill glared at Carter. “What about him? What do you think your Doorway Program is going to do to him?”

“We’re not Black Ops, O'Neill.” Makepeace stepped back into the room. “We’re a research program, a joint astrophysical and military initiative. Maybe even anthropological initiative if we can ever get the damned thing to work. And I think you’ll like General Hammond. He’s a good man.” His gaze seemed to say that O'Neill knew he wouldn’t say that lightly. 

Daniel said, “He knows Captain Carter’s father.”

O'Neill gave him another exasperated look but he couldn’t conceal the concern in his brown eyes. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

Daniel shifted uncomfortably. “Yes.”

“Your mind moves in mysterious ways, you know that?”

“That’s why we need him.” Carter turned her pleading look on O'Neill.

“I’m not his keeper,” O'Neill retorted, although the warning glare he directed at her and Makepeace suggested to Daniel that he was going to act remarkably like it if they did anything he felt would be detrimental to Daniel’s welfare.

Daniel tried to remember when anyone else had ever looked like that, like a wolf in its den who would dismember anyone who touched its cubs, and realized no one had ever looked like that on his behalf before. The nearest had been Tony’s attack on that orderly in White Towers before he dragged Daniel out of there and down to the car, and that had been more to do with not wanting someone else playing with his toys. This felt much better. He smiled at O'Neill as if they were alone and Sha’re had never died, as if everything was normal and they were old friends. “Will you come with me?”

O'Neill sighed. “Yes.” 

Daniel’s smile widened. He hoped O'Neill knew he was grateful, he hoped he could read it in his eyes because he didn’t have words enough to convey it. He caught sight of the tea cups Rosalita had brought up. “The tea will be cold. Aunt Zinnia will –”

“We have tea in Cheyenne Mountain, I promise you.” Carter grabbed his arm as if he was a kid brother slowing up a family outing and began to tow him towards the door. Her enthusiasm was infectious. It was a long time since he’d felt as enthusiastic about anything as she obviously did about her stone ring and its non-hieroglyphic inscriptions. 

He looked over his shoulder at O'Neill, needing to know that he was coming too. “We seem to be leaving.”

Behind him O'Neill was saying shortly to Makepeace: “I’m only agreeing to this on condition that when I say he’s had enough, you let me take him home.” Makepeace made some non-committal murmur of something that could have been consent.

Tony was standing at the bottom of the staircase like the Colossus of Rhodes, glowering but indecisive. It occurred to Daniel that he was Tony’s Achilles heel, the crack in his façade. Everything else about his life was relatively normal and straightforward, on the surface anyway, but Daniel was the secret vice no one else was meant to see. It probably felt as if he was being flicked repeatedly on an abcessed tooth to have Daniel constantly dragged into the light.

“He can’t leave this house without his doctor’s consent.” That sounded pretty definite anyway.

Daniel found himself darting a look at O'Neill to see if the man was going to back down the way people always did back down with Tony, usually avoiding Daniel’s eye as they did so.

“Captain Carter’s a doctor.” O'Neill quietly steered Daniel past Tony. “And I have his pills. They need his help for a translation and they’re not used to taking ‘no’ for an answer.” O'Neill’s shrug suggested that he had tried and failed to reason with them and was now resigned to the inevitable.

Uncertainty flickered across Tony’s face. He had been nervous and tense for weeks now, maybe even months, and alcohol, drugs, or lack of sleep seemed to be eroding the strength of his will. Daniel knew how that worked.

Makepeace moved to the other side of Daniel so he was flanked by people Tony would have to physically remove before Daniel could be reached. He spoke smoothly: “He’ll be back before you know it.”

Captain Carter had already moved ahead to open the front door. As she pulled it back rain blew in on a gust of the coming summer storm. It had been so hot an hour before that he had felt the warm damp air trying to reach him through the windows, and now it was cold, or he was cold anyway. Daniel flinched from the chill, hair still a little damp from the shower.

“Wait.” Tony’s voice caught. Daniel watched him with a mixture of curiosity and compassion as Tony strode to the cloakroom which Zinnia had insisted must be decorated with William Morris tiles. The ugly vase on the useless occasional table was very valuable apparently but Daniel would have preferred some of the plain red clay of pre-Dynastic Egypt. Tony emerged carrying a greatcoat that looked as if some infantryman would have been weighed down with in the mud of Flanders. “He’d better wear a coat.”

Daniel realized it was Nick’s coat and felt frozen for a moment. Tony approached like a bullfighter advancing on a bull and then the gray coat was being flourished at him and he was automatically putting out his arms. He had been dressed by orderlies and Tony himself too many times not to have learned it was better in the long run to be cooperative. Tony slipped the coat on and then turned him around to button it. It was very heavy but it did feel warm. Tony touched his hair briefly and his thumb brushed Daniel’s cheekbone almost tenderly.

When Daniel looked into his stepbrother’s eyes he couldn’t understand the expression in them, all that guilt and misery and rage. “What’s wrong?” he breathed.

For a frozen second he thought Tony was going to tell him he was sorry, as he’d used to do sometimes when he’d been little more than a child himself and the quick flarings of lust had been overtaken with equally rapid flarings of remorse. 

“Nothing.” Tony turned away. “Except you’re too fucked up to live, you know that? Anyone would be doing you a favor who put you out of your misery.”

“Don’t talk to him like that.”

There was a dangerous edge to O'Neill’s voice that made Daniel look at him in shock. The burn in his brown eyes looked murderous.

Tony turned on him angrily. “What do you know about it? You don’t know anything. You don’t know how fucked up he is. There comes a point when you can’t undo it. When you can’t make it better again. He’s never going to be well. He’s never going to be sane. I’d be doing him a favor if I wrang his damned neck.”

He was always at his most unpredictable when he was in this mood. This was the way he got sometimes in the chill darkness before dawn when Daniel would wake suddenly and find Tony looking at him with something that could have been love or hate, and the man would say: “What would you really lose if you just stopped breathing? Do you want me to put this pillow over your head? Is that what you want?”

“No.” Even at his lowest ebb Daniel had never wanted to be dead. He wasn’t suicidal, whatever Doctor Green might insist in his notes. None of his actions had been guided by any desire to self-destruct.

“Why not? How can you want to live like this?”

O'Neill jolted Daniel out of the memories as he hissed savagely at Tony: “The only fucked up thing about his life is you. If you want to do him a favor – kill yourself.” Then he grabbed Daniel by the arm and pulled him away from Tony. Daniel let himself be pulled, feeling curiously weightless and removed from it all, even as he was tugged across the cold tiles out onto the uncomfortable gravel, the stones digging painfully into the soft soles of his feet.

 

Methamphetamine addiction, O'Neill thought, like a light going off in his head, or Methylenedioxymethamphetamine addiction. Or if not yet addiction, certainly the beginnings of a serious habit. That would explain the mood swings, the aggression, and the sexual brutality. The worst serial rapist he’d ever had the misfortune to deal with had been a habitual crystal meth user. His rage at and cruelty towards the women he’d assaulted had made him glow like nuclear waste in O'Neill’s mind. He’d always pictured him edged with a red flame. It had been a surprise when they’d picked him up to find him only an ordinary looking youth, sullenly resentful of being caught and apparently bewildered that society was going to make him pay for his crime, rather than with eyes that actually glowed red in the dark.

“Does your step-brother use drugs?”

Jackson looked at him from under his lashes. He was such a strange mixture of confidence and insecurity. When he’d been on his home ground, even if it was that penthouse prison cell of a bedroom, and discussing a subject he knew inside and out, he’d been positively urbane, playing the Air Force visitors like stringed instruments. As soon as he was taken out of his own little rut, even if it was away from beatings and drugged confusion, he seemed to shrink into himself. O'Neill noticed that Jackson had moved closer to him as soon as they left the house, and was now a visible warmth by his left side, O'Neill his walking security blanket.

“Why…?” Jackson asked cautiously.

O'Neill rolled his eyes. “That means ‘yes’.”

“It means ‘why?’.”

“Methamphetamine addiction can make people aggressive, irrational, abusive, promiscuous, and paranoid. Sound like anyone you know?”

There was a pause in which O'Neill could clearly hear the crunching of the gravel under his and Makepeace’s boots as they walked down the drive. Jackson said quietly, “He got me out of the hospital. My uncle would never have signed the release papers if Tony hadn’t made him do it.”

“I thought it was Tony who got you committed in the first place?”

Jackson turned his head away in annoyance and O'Neill felt the warmth withdrawn from his side. Quietly but fiercely, Jackson said, “I did it to myself. I had a breakdown by myself. I killed my dog and went insane and got myself committed, and then I lost my voice and my reason and sat in a corner and gibbered and got myself committed again.”

“After finding your grandfather’s dead body?”

The look of pain that washed over Jackson’s face made him wish he’d phrased it differently. He’d seen the crime scene photographs and they hadn’t been pretty. _Who knew the old man had so much blood in him?_ Those elongated splatter patterns that spoke of bludgeoning as opposed to the fine mist of a bullet spray or the telltale drops from a stabbing. One day he’d like to see a TV murder that dealt with the reality. How ugly it truly was, the violent end of a human life. A pint of blood was a slick red sea on a polished floor. People’s loved ones tossed face down in ditches like so much garbage, their bodies decomposing so fast sometimes it was only the black-fly larvae that told you when they’d died, only dental records the proof that there was any connection between some half dressed corpse with its face rotted off and its innards turned to slush and some living breathing human being with hopes and ambitions that had nothing to do with meeting some maniac on an unlit road. 

He and Sara had argued about it all the time, what to do with those derailers and destroyers of lives. He thought those who took lives should have to pay with their own, she mistrusted the fallibility of a system that had failed so often in the past. She mistrusted men like him particularly, and that had always enraged him. “It’s because you care that you’re dangerous,” she had told him. “None of you are objective from the moment you first see the corpse.” And there were other reasons why he knew – God how he knew – how it felt to find a loved one’s head leaving a shining trail of red wetness under an unlocked door.

Jackson was trying to rally but he was ghost-pale, his bruises ugly in the daylight. “It’s not Tony’s fault I don’t react well to stress. When I found Nick I sat down in the corner and waited for him not to be dead. To stop being someone who wasn’t him and to walk through the door and help me get rid of this stranger on his floor. I didn’t even call the police. The mailman found us both in the morning. I’d forgotten how to speak. I had to write it down for the policeman. I think I may have been a suspect for a while. Perhaps I still am. Sometimes I don’t know, myself. Sometimes I don’t know myself.”

O'Neill abruptly felt he had to offer something of equivalent value and he wanted to distract Jackson from the idea that he might have done it. Yes, he’d been a suspect for a while, but he hadn’t had any blood on him. He was wearing the clothes he’d been wearing when he left college and every other item was still in his suitcase. The same suitcase he’d dropped inside the door. It had blood underneath it from lying in that cooling pool all night but it hadn’t had any on its surface, neither had Jackson, just a little on his fingertips where he’d felt for a pulse, but the kitchen had been splattered with blood and brains. It was impossible he could have committed the crime without ending up covered in blood.

O'Neill had seen his written note: _That isn’t my grandfather. My grandfather doesn’t look like that._ It had looked like a child’s handwriting, not the work of a man of twenty-six with three PhDs. That was how the police had described him too when they saw him. Curled up in the corner, sockless, with a hole in one sneaker, looking at his grandfather’s corpse like a rabbit hypnotized by a snake. They had advanced towards him cautiously, like someone approaching a wounded dog. They’d even thought he was a child at first until they’d realized as they got closer and adjusted to the scale of the place that he was an adult male, could even be the murderer. My grandfather doesn’t look like that. He knew how that felt. His son hadn’t been the boy on the life support machine they’d had to switch off either. That boy was still playing softball in his mind, still running through the sunlight and laughing at cartoons.

“It was my son.” O'Neill turned to meet Jackson’s eyes, an ordeal he felt he deserved to match the one Jackson had endured. “Who died. He shot himself with my gun. My fault. I got careless. I didn’t take the bullets out. I didn’t lock the drawer. I forgot what a gun is. Like inviting Death into your house and hoping he never arrives.”

“I’m sorry.” 

The depth of compassion for him in Jackson’s blue eyes made him feel breathless. Jackson was living it for him in that instant, imagining it, as if he could see into O'Neill’s mind, could comprehend what even O'Neill, who had been there, couldn’t fully understand. In that instant he felt as if Jackson knew everything, had seen everything he had seen, had even held his hand by that bedside and prayed along with him for a miracle that had chosen not to occur.

“I’m so sorry, Jack.”

At the sound of his name on Jackson’s lips he felt a shiver of warmth go through him, like the flame of a good brandy. He almost reeled from the power of it, darting him a quick surprised look.

Jackson gave him a flickering smile that begged him not to be mad. “I asked Kawalsky and he told me. You don’t mind?”

O'Neill found his voice with difficulty, he had realized why Jackson wanted him to call him by his first name, how important it was to be called by your first name sometimes by someone who spoke it with so much…love. “No, I don’t mind.” His voice sounded hoarse, almost shaky. “Daniel.”

Jackson gave him a look of gratitude that warmed him further, then averted his eyes quickly. O'Neill realized he was looking at someone with a crush. That the same toasty warmth he’d felt so unexpectedly when Jackson said his first name was now flowing through Jackson’s veins. Hero worship was probably inevitable in a case where the only male role model the guy ever saw was a whacked out abusive brute who kept him a virtual prisoner and used him for sex. Compared with Tony Ballard-Green any guy would have looked good to Jackson. Or, remembering his performance with Janet Fraiser, any woman.

O'Neill glanced across at Carter who was talking quietly into her cellphone, something urgent-sounding and technical, flight times and security clearances. O'Neill had probably caused the flurry of activity as they tried to get him cleared for take-off, like a jumbo jet. They hadn’t expected Jackson to come with an ex-USAF chaperone. Carter really was very pretty, with beautiful skin, soft, golden hair, very like Sara’s, and huge blue eyes, she had a great figure too, would no doubt look a knock out in evening dress or a mini-skirt, with those long legs. Noticing that was fine and showed he wasn’t dead from the neck down after all. Except what was truly disturbing was that he was noticing it with hostility, the way he’d looked at guys who were Sara’s type in bars and felt an instinctive dislike because there was a chance they might catch her eye. But when he turned to Jackson, the guy was looking not at Carter but at him. 

O'Neill smiled at him reassuringly, worried that Jackson might get another panic attack, and Jackson smiled back, a little shyly, which, given his usual attitude, made O'Neill feel another outburst of protective warmth towards him. “We’ll take my car, okay?”

Jackson nodded. He seemed relieved to have someone else take charge although O'Neill suspected that would last only as long as the person in charge was doing things Jackson approved of. “Okay.”

O'Neill told Makepeace and Carter they needed to go somewhere first so they’d better follow him out of the drive, then he’d follow them to the airport. 

“Where do you need to go?” Makepeace demanded.

O'Neill deliberately didn’t look at Jackson’s robe and bare feet but spoke with great firmness: “Shopping.”

***

Shopping with Daniel Jackson turned out to involve a few detours O'Neill hadn’t expected. His plan had been to drive to the nearest Gap or Banana Republic and buy him a nice linen suit and shirt for around five hundred dollars, but when he’d driven slowly past the first store, Jackson had looked like a deer in front of headlights and O'Neill had just kept going. Too many people in the store seemed to be the problem. That ruled out Sears or any other department store as well. He headed for Brooks Brothers and Jackson didn’t try to hide under the seat when they reached it so he figured that was a good sign. However, he didn’t show any sign of wanting to get out of the car either.

“Maybe you should just buy me something.” Jackson gave him a begging look while plucking at his robe. “I’ll pay you back.”

“Aren’t you a little sick of wearing clothes other people have chosen for you?” O'Neill countered.

“I’m wearing pajamas,” Jackson muttered.

“So, you’re eccentric.”

“I didn’t bring my wallet.” Jackson shifted a little lower in his seat. 

“I brought mine.”

“They’ll think I’m your…”

“Unconventional younger brother from out of town.” O'Neill reached across him and opened the car door. He felt a little like someone having to drop their kid off outside the school gates for the first time, the same mixture of having to be cruel to be kind. “Come on, it doesn’t do to keep the US Air Force waiting.”

He tried not to wince at the reproachful look Jackson shot him across the car, humming quietly to himself as he locked the door. Meanwhile, Jackson had composed himself as well as he could, belting his robe with an attempt at dignity before marching into the store. O'Neill felt Jackson’s palpable relief when O'Neill took care to follow half a pace behind him. 

The security guard did a double take and he felt Jackson flinch. He quietly guided him with a hand across his back to the racks of suits. As a sales assistant came across, O'Neill saw him take in Jackson’s barefoot and robe clad appearance then dart a look at O'Neill who kept his expression stony, daring the guy to make some audible comment. Clearly, the sales assistants here were trained to be helpful to anyone, however borderline his sanity might be, and within seconds the young man had a helpful expression firmly plastered to his face.

“Is there anything in particular you were looking for, sir?”

Jackson winced in embarrassment. “Something less in the pajama line and more in the ordinary clothes line would be nice.”

It was a sweet smile and the rueful look on his face conjured a genuine smile in return from the assistant. 

“Mix up at the airport,” O'Neill explained. “Doctor Jackson’s luggage is on its way to Guatemala and my inside leg’s a little longer than his.”

When Jackson automatically glanced at his groin as if to double check, O'Neill barely repressed a grin, especially when Jackson realized where he’d been suckered into looking, colored, and then darted O'Neill a glance of exasperation. 

“He needs some smart casuals,” O'Neill told the assistant. “He’s got a presentation to give.”

“Of course.” The man nodded to O'Neill then gave Jackson another genuine smile. “Would you come this way, sir? I’m sure we can find you something more…appropriate.”

“Thank you.” Jackson darted O'Neill an anxious look over his shoulder as he followed the assistant and O'Neill was reminded again of how difficult even this was for him. It was hard to believe this was the same guy who had been lecturing halls full of students only a few years earlier. His brain chemistry had certainly done a number on him. Or someone’s interference with his brain chemistry….

“Will he be okay?” 

The question so completely mirrored his own thoughts that he turned in surprise to find Captain Carter standing next to him. The concern in her eyes as she looked after Jackson made him warm to her a little more even if she was unnecessarily pretty and Jackson undoubtedly susceptible.

“He’ll be fine.” He had no idea if that was true or not but he thought Jackson would rather the impression given was that his nerves were a lot stronger than they were.

“He was misdiagnosed as schizophrenic for a while. They gave him the wrong medication.”

He resented her having access to medical information about Jackson that was denied to him but it was still interesting to hear what she knew.

“When he was fifteen?”

“Yes. With schizophrenia, the earlier it’s diagnosed and treated, the more controllable it is. They thought it was a first break psychotic episode and medicated accordingly.”

“He killed his dog. That sounds pretty psychotic to me.” 

Jackson had taken a jacket from a rack now, and a shirt, and now some pants. O'Neill wasn’t sure what his process of selection was as he had chosen swiftly but without confidence, looking at the sales assistant’s determinedly blank face for some confirmation that he was doing this right. The clothes looked pretty drab to O'Neill, not at all what he would have picked for him, which would have been a pale linen jacket over blue jeans and a white thick cotton shirt, something that an archaeologist could wear to a dig or out to dinner with equal ease.

Carter cut into his thoughts. “As a policeman what would be your interpretation if you found someone unconscious next to a body with the knife that had killed that person laid on their hand but with no blood spatter on their clothing or the surrounding area and very little blood in the vicinity despite the victim supposedly dying from a fatal stab wound?”

O'Neill snatched a breath because if she was right then it was so much worse than he had been thinking, so much darker and crueler and sicker than he had wanted to believe. Jackson was going into the cubicle now, darting a look at O'Neill before he went as if he would have liked him to come and help him. O'Neill determinedly stayed where he was, reminding himself that Jackson had three PhDs and therefore ought to be able to dress himself. He kept his voice level: “As a body bleeds profusely as long as the heart is still beating but stops bleeding as soon as the heart stops, my first instinct would be to assume the victim had been killed elsewhere and the supposed killer had been framed.”

“That was my assumption too.” Her eyes were watchful as she looked between Jackson and him. “He got out the first time because an orderly didn’t feel the treatment Doctor Jackson was receiving at that time was appropriate to his age and condition. He visited Doctor Jackson’s grandfather, Doctor Nicholas Ballard, in the psychiatric hospital in which his grandfather was a voluntary patient. His grandfather was disturbed enough by what the orderly told him to sign himself out and go and demand his grandson’s release. If it hadn’t been for the orderly he might never have gotten out. Reading his case notes, the doctor treating him doesn’t express any doubts about the medicine he’s on. I spoke to the orderly. He’s based in Colorado now so it wasn’t difficult.” 

It occurred to O'Neill that everyone was doing detective work except him. It also occurred to him that although she kept referring to ‘Doctor Jackson’, the patient they were discussing hadn’t been ‘Doctor Jackson’ then, just a teenage orphan called Daniel. “What did he say?”

“That Doctor Jackson was better off his meds than on them. And when he was off them the orderly didn’t understand why anyone would put him on them.” Carter lowered her voice to say urgently: “Have you any idea how much Doctor Jackson’s trust fund is worth?”

“Between thirty six and thirty eight million.” O'Neill sighed at the inevitability of it all. “Though it may not all be there. As far as we can tell Tony Ballard-Green’s lifestyle costs a lot more than his mother’s inheritance would seem to be able to support.”

Carter closed her eyes briefly before saying, “What if…?”

“There’s no proof of any wrongdoing.” O'Neill cut her off quickly because amateurs always wanted to walk before they could run when on the scent of a crime, despite the fact he’d just done some unproven speculation himself and everything he and Kawalsky had found out about the Ballard millions so far had switched on little warning lights in both their minds. “The doctor who treated him is properly qualified and the policemen who found him at the scene of his grandfather’s murder definitely described him as seriously mentally disturbed.”

“Well, under those circumstances, wouldn’t you be?” As soon as the words left her mouth, she winced and he realized she and Makepeace had been researching him even as he’d been researching Jackson. That they knew about his son. How dare they? Even though he spent his life looking into the minutiae of other people’s lives, it still infuriated him that they had been checking through his. They must have done some extra checking in the car while they were all driving into town. 

“I’m sorry,” Carter said hastily.

“What’s the name of the orderly? I may need to see him.”

“What case is it you’re actually investigating?”

He gave her what he hoped was a blood-freezing glare, grateful for that phone-call from Kawalsky that legitimized his actions. “The murder of two women both connected to Gray Gables. Doctor Jackson is a suspect.”

Carter looked shocked. “He trusts you.”

“I catch murderers, Captain. That’s what I do.”

He could feel the disapproval coming off her like the scent of her perfume. She’d spent about ten minutes alone with Jackson and she already felt O'Neill was borderline evil for even suspecting him of committing a murder. He almost pointed out to her that Ted Bundy had been a good looking guy, and driven a Volkswagen Beetle, just like Herbie, and what do you know, he’d still been a psychotic serial killer. Still, she wrote down the name and contact address then handed it to him wordlessly. She had neat handwriting, he noticed, and he wondered if she made herself write like that when really she wanted to write in loops and scrolls; if she sometimes smoked a joint when no one was looking, if she was a tiger in the bedroom, if she sang Joni Mitchell songs when she thought no one was listening and hit all the high notes as clear as a bell, or if she really was just this tidy surface she presented to the world. He looked at what she had written: Jim Bratac, a telephone number, and an address. He thanked her and pocketed them.

Jackson had gotten himself into some clothes now, emerging from the cubicle wearing his new purchases while still clinging onto his robe as if it was a comforter. O'Neill was even more certain he’d picked them himself instead of just putting on what the sales assistant offered him because no sales assistant would have chosen that washed out blue shirt with that drab plaid suit or that godawful tie. Sheesh, it was true then. Jackson really did have terrible taste in clothes. O'Neill had his mouth open to make some ironic witticism about now understanding why Tony burned his clothes when Jackson turned to look at him uncertainly, glancing between O'Neill and the suit and tie he had picked, clearly lacking in confidence about his choices. O'Neill saw him in that minute as so vulnerable it hurt. He swallowed hard and when Jackson gave him a nervous smile and held up a corner of the jacket he was wearing as if for O'Neill’s approval, O'Neill gave him a smiling thumb’s up in return.

He was aware of Makepeace and Carter looking at Jackson’s clothes and wincing – Makepeace impatient, Carter full of pity, her maternal instincts engaged even though she was only a couple of years older than Jackson – and crossed over to where the sales assistant was still hovering.

“Are these okay?” Jackson murmured, shy now because O'Neill would be paying for them. O'Neill felt a spark of anger that the guy had been reduced to this when he had enough money to buy up the store had he been so inclined, but was dependent on a cop he hardly knew to save him from arriving at a military installation barefoot and wearing pajamas.

“They’re fine but you need two of everything. Do you want them exactly the same as these or is there anything else you liked?”

The anger must have shown in his voice because Jackson looked up at him quickly, shocked and then his eyes softened and he looked away, saying gently, “Don’t mind so much, Jack.”

The words lit a fuse he couldn’t have explained, but he had to move away. He strode from rack to rack purposefully, collecting jeans, t-shirts, sweaters, underwear, socks. All the clothes normal people had. When he reached the big Please Pay Here sign, Jackson had added a white shirt to the blue one he was wearing, some drab stone-colored pants, and a tweedy jacket with corduroy patches on the elbows. The suit he was wearing didn’t fit. The jacket was two sizes too big for him. Perhaps he’d just picked up the first one he came to without thinking. Not wearing pajamas was such a novelty to him it might not have occurred to him that he could not only have outdoor clothes he could have outdoor clothes that were his size instead of Tony’s. Even so, O'Neill suspected no pants bought off the rack were going to fit Jackson, his legs were longer than average and his waist was significantly smaller. These looked about right for length but his slenderness had left them ballooning at the waist.

“Did you pick up a belt?” he asked quietly.

The shock in the blue eyes reminded him in that instant that Jackson wasn’t allowed things with which he could hang himself. 

O'Neill continued evenly, “You’ll need a belt. These clothes aren’t tailored. They’re off the rack, and you’re not an average size.”

Jackson looked across at where they were hanging, black and brown lengths of leather with their buckles gleaming silver or brass under the fluorescent lighting, but it was clearly too much of a taboo to be broken. If they assistant hadn’t been standing right there watching them so curiously, O'Neill would have waited the moment out until Jackson could make that move himself, but he didn’t want the truth known and as he glanced down he saw that Jackson’s right hand was beginning to shake. As he crossed to pick two belts off the rack, he felt his eyes stinging with anger. In his mind he heard Carter saying: Doctor Jackson was better off his meds than on them. What if Jackson had always been sane? What if there had never been a psychotic break, a mental instability, a suicidal depression that had come from within, a black tar pit of insanity welling up from inherited darkness? What if every tic and flinch and flying demon absailing down the drapes had been inflicted upon him by the actions of others? By abuse and wrong diagnosis, and over-medication, and the grief and shock of his grandfather’s murder?

As he put the belts down on the counter, one black, one brown, Jackson couldn’t conceal a flinch and the sales assistant darted a shocked looked of accusation in O'Neill’s direction. Ignoring him, O'Neill said evenly, “I picked out some jeans for you in case these people want you to go and look at a dig somewhere. You don’t want to get your new suit dirty. I got you a few white shirts. I think these t-shirts should fit you….” The shaking from Jackson was very obvious now, he was holding onto his right wrist with his left hand in a desperate attempt to conceal the trembling of his fingers, trying to lock his neurasthenic body into rigid obedience and only making it judder more, like a wineglass around which a finger had been too firmly stroked. O'Neill kept talking about the Middle East, about the virtues of briefs over boxers and a hundred percent woolen socks, while the sales assistant removed security tags and scanned in barcodes and darted little glances of curiosity between them as he tried to work out if they were a couple or not.

He could smell the leather all the time the goods were being folded and put into bags and knew Jackson could smell it too. The belts had been a mistake, he realized that now, and not just because they had brought the threat of suicide too close, past attempts perhaps, or the shadow of the future ones that perhaps beckoned too often in the darkest hours before dawn. There had been night games in the past that Tony had played with leather belts and the cutting edge of buckles, freedom stolen and punishment delivered, used as gags and bonds and as a means to welt vulnerable skin.

Jackson couldn’t stop shaking but he turned and whispered fiercely in O'Neill’s ear: “I’m not afraid of him.”

“I know.” He tried to sound convinced.

“It’s a conditioned response. It’s breakable with therapy.” It was a mistake for him to speak through gritted teeth as it meant the sales assistant could hear them chattering as the shaking got worse. As Jackson fumbled for his pills in the pocket of the robe he was still carrying, he pulled out too many and they spattered on the floor. The Guatemala story was blown now and they both knew it. Anyone within twenty feet of him knew Jackson was someone dependent upon the care of the community. O'Neill knelt down beside Jackson and helped him to pick up the pills, asking him quietly which one he needed to take, which one would calm his nerves without clouding his mind too much. He held out a handful of them and Jackson selected a small pink one like a connoisseur choosing from a wine list.

By the time they straightened up, there was pity in the sales assistant’s eyes and the smile he gave Jackson was the fixed one a man would use upon someone mentally handicapped. As he folded the pajamas neatly and put them into one of their bags, he seemed a hair’s breadth away from asking O'Neill if Jackson took sugar in his tea. O'Neill handed over his credit card without a word and watched it rack up two month’s wages unflinchingly. The extravagance of fitting out Jackson with a new wardrobe appealed to him on a number of levels, it gave him the first spark of genuine pleasure he’d known in a number of days. 

As he took the bags from the sales assistant, he gave Jackson a shit-eating grin. Even though the jacket didn’t go with the pants Jackson had picked, and both were drab and earnest looking, and didn’t really fit him or suit him, and both clashed with his shirt which clashed with his tie – which he’d knotted wrongly, O'Neill noticed – it didn’t matter. He was no longer Tony’s prisoner in pajamas, he was dressed to dweeb with the best of them and he looked like every absent-minded academic O'Neill had ever met. “You look great,” he told him and because he meant it, Jackson read it in his eyes and laughed, a quick surprised laugh, like a girl who’d just been paid her first compliment. And then he lowered his gaze and blushed, then blushed some more because he was afraid O'Neill would notice. 

O'Neill realized it didn’t just not bother him that Jackson had a crush on him, he positively liked it. Putting a hand on his shoulder, he gently guided him towards the exit, talking about the right kind of shoes for a doctor of archaeology to wear when entering a military installation and how they had better be brown and have laces. 

Jackson looked up, gaze fixed on O'Neill’s face. “I prefer them with laces.”

“I remember.” O'Neill kept his hand on his shoulder until he transferred it to his back, guiding him through the store to the blizzard of people and daylight that flooded the sidewalk, guiding him to the car, and talking about sneakers as he did so, as if Jackson really would be going to a dig sometime soon, as if he really could put on his shoes and his suit any time he liked and walk out of the front door like any other man.

***

In the store with O'Neill, for that brief moment, it had been fine, perhaps because that part of the journey had been entirely under O'Neill’s control. But from then on Daniel felt as if he were being carried along in the slipstream of the USAF. Makepeace led the way to the airstrip where a big rattling jet was waiting to fly them to Colorado. Getting onto the plane made him think of previous flights to Egypt, when he’d been full of excitement and had imagined his life was always going to be the way it was then: he and Sarah excavating the past together. Then the USAF had stolen all their findings, and his and Sarah’s relationship had cracked under the strain. She had been convinced there was some skullduggery at work – rightly as it turned out – whereas he’d just wanted to accept that those artifacts were lost forever and try to decipher what they could from the notes they’d made and photographs that hadn’t been lost. 

He’d always had an instinct for languages, written and spoken, the way some people were with music, hearing and seeing the pattern in them very easily. While Sarah raged and fumed and followed up leads that as far as he could tell led nowhere and never could lead anywhere as the plane had crashed and everything had been lost and that was an end to it, he had tried to work out what the inscription had been saying, dreaming it and eating it and living it until Sarah had screamed at him with so much anger he had realized they had crossed a line somewhere. That this was no longer a strong relationship going through a bad patch but a relationship fatally weakened to the point of disintegration. He couldn’t deal with her rage and she couldn’t deal with his sulking. When she’d raised her voice once too often and he’d physically flinched, she’d walked out and slammed the door so hard an African mask had fallen from the wall and cracked. They’d broken up in a mixture of angry words and wounded silences, and getting onto this USAF jet reminded him all over again that these were the people who had done it to him. These were the people who had messed up the first significant relationship in his life and by doing so possibly doomed him to that interminable eighteen months in an asylum being drugged into a stupor and slyly fondled by an orderly for whom the greatest aphrodisiac was power.

He felt the resentment building as they were flown across the country, clouds and landscapes whipping past beneath them like a freedom he could glimpse but never touch. The stink of fuel made him airsick and he was half-deafened by the roar of the engines. Beside him, O'Neill was grim and silent, probably remembering missions performed under cover of darkness he would have preferred to forget. Daniel was still reverberating from the realization that O'Neill hadn’t always been a policeman, that he had blood on his hands, and, more disturbing, that even so Daniel was still drawn to him in a way he had never been drawn to another human being in his life. He wanted to put his head on O'Neill’s shoulder and breathe in his scent, curl up against him and purr with the pleasure of that proximity. He wanted to feel the rasp of his stubble against his face, wanted to kiss him and be kissed in return, wanted that fierce possessiveness he sensed in the man directed at him. Strangest of all, he wanted O'Neill to touch him in all the same places Tony touched him, his fingerprints overlaying Tony’s and banishing them from his skin.

“Are you okay?”

O'Neill murmured it to him quietly and Daniel started guiltily as he realized he’d been half asleep against the older man. “Fine. Sorry.” 

They both looked at the way his hands were shaking. “Are you cold?”

“I need caffeine,” he admitted.

O'Neill’s mouth twitched.

“What?” Daniel enquired.

O'Neill glanced across at Makepeace before murmuring conspiratorially in Daniel’s ear: “I don’t think you deserve the USAF but I kind of think they deserve you. Especially when you haven’t had caffeine.”

Recognizing that O'Neill thought he was paying him a backhanded compliment, Daniel tried to smile, except O'Neill seemed to be saying he thought Daniel was a brat. O'Neill indulged him, despite his brattishness, because he considered Daniel more of a child than an adult. That was why he tolerated him so much better than other people did, why he had bought him clothes, why it infuriated him that Tony hit him and had sex with him. The day he saw Daniel as an adult was presumably the day when he would lose interest. Right now, Daniel was a holding place for his dead son in O'Neill’s damaged psyche, protective and paternal instincts needing something at which to be directed, and having randomly fallen onto Daniel.

Wrapping his arms around himself, Daniel felt the tremors racing through his body. It was difficult to remember a time when he hadn’t felt like this, brain either muffled or dagger bright, colors bleeding or unbearably heightened, as if the focus had been sharpened and sharpened until the edge of every image was a razor’s edge. He could function in his room by ignoring everything else, the tremors and chills, the acute sensations of anxiety, because he could tell himself there that any such fears were irrational and irrelevant. If he had a blackout in his room, as long as he was locked in – as he invariably was after every argument with Tony – he could do no harm to anyone but himself anyway and Tony had tried to make it difficult for him to do any harm to himself. That was Tony’s role. In between punishing him for real or imagined transgressions, Tony kept him safe from everyone’s anger but his own. But the sense of anxiety was much harder to ignore on a noisy fuel-spewing jet plane.

He could feel the jitters getting worse as they landed, his fingers digging into the seat as the plane bucked and roared its way to earth. It wasn’t exactly a fear of death, more a fear of fear itself. Whatever was causing it, the anxiety began to build, he felt breathless and sick, and images swooped through his memory of Nick lying in a slick pool of blackish blood. In his own room he could have focused on something, a puzzle that intrigued him, a translation he could work on, but here he was cut off from all the objects that he turned to for comfort when the pills clashed or failed to do their work. As the engines finally stopped, he wanted only to crawl into somewhere dark and quiet, as much as possible like his closet or the safe space beneath his bed, and rock a little until the panic attack passed.

“What’s wrong with him?” Makepeace sounded more perplexed than concerned.

“He’s fine.” The edge to O'Neill’s voice was oddly comforting. “Just bring the damned car round.”

When Daniel tried to get to his feet, he realized he was too dizzy to walk unaided, but O'Neill seemed to know it too, putting an arm around his shoulders to steady him and talking quietly: “We’re getting into a car now. We’re going in the back. Okay?”

“Okay.” Daniel tried not to make any whimpering or bleating noises, but the panic was still spiking higher and higher, a soundless scream in his mind. Clinging tightly to the robe he had insisted on bringing onto the plane as hand luggage, he leaned heavily against O'Neill as the man walked him down the plane, down steps that would otherwise have been impossible to negotiate, and towards a long black car that seemed to him to be hugging the ground like an animal waiting to pounce.

Someone in a uniform opened the back door and then they were inside. The seats smelled of leather and he flinched from them, imagining some animal ripped open and its hide half-removed.

“Why don’t you lie down?” 

O'Neill seemed to know about the spinning. Daniel thought the floor looked the most inviting but O'Neill’s arm on his shoulder stopped him, guiding him not ungently down onto the seat, before pulling the robe around him. As Daniel scrabbled for another pill, the man caught his wrist and held it, rubbing a thumb gently across his palm to hold his attention. “Wait and see if it passes. You’re medicating your medication right now.”

Daniel felt a flash of annoyance with him because who was some policeman who’d used to kill people for a living to tell him whether he should or shouldn’t take his pills? Since his last visit to the asylum, he’d always been encouraged to take more pills, and if they didn’t work, to take more again. It had been a condition of his release that Tony ensured he took his medication, and in that at least Tony had tried to be responsible.

He curled up tighter on the seat, wishing he could just throw up, although he knew, because he’d looked it up, that he was feeling sick only because he was hyperventilating, that his body had gotten into a pattern of conditioned response to stress that spiraled him into a panic attack. His limbs felt heavy and cold and it comforted him beyond all explanation when O'Neill began to rub his back. 

“Is he okay?” Makepeace demanded.

“He’s fine.” O'Neill’s tone seemed to warn the other man not to even think about looking over the seat to check. “Switch on the radio. Find something about archaeology.”

The car moved away smoothly, making him think of sharks moving effortlessly through the water. He’d watched a lot of TV in White Towers, much of it nature programs. It was encouraged. They put the set on too loud and sat you in front of it. In the lounge it was always punctuated by the comments from other patients, but in his private room he could sometimes lose himself in the program. Melvin had always told him it was a concession, letting him have a private room, but Daniel was well aware that there had been no thriving practice for Melvin before he’d become a trustee of the Ballard millions. The clinic had been small and unfashionable until Nick had decided he was insane and put himself out of harm’s way. It was Melvin who’d persuaded him he wasn’t a suitable guardian for an impressionable child, who had told Nick he saw the first signs of mental instability in Daniel also and how he might yet be saved from delusions and dementia if he was placed in a stable environment. 

Zinnia had tried to give him stability it was true. She had never missed a parents’ meeting and although she hadn’t comprehended everything the teachers told her she had been proud of all the ‘A’s on Daniel’s reports, had looked at him as if he was some exotic alien when he spoke Spanish to the maids or Arabic to the cab driver. She had bought him every book he’d ever asked for. He had always been incomprehensible to her, but had it been just the two of them he thought they might have dared to develop affection for one another, but Tony needed all affection directed only to him. Attention given to Daniel by Tony’s mother was paid for later in pinches, punches, and Chinese burns. Daniel and Zinnia never discussed the possibility of thwarting Tony, or admitted he was a problem they were circumventing, but they maintained an emotional distance from one another, and showed Tony more affection than they showed one another.

Captain Carter had done her best to find him something on the radio that might distract him. Something about Troy. He would have preferred Zawi Hawass talking about almost anything but he acknowledged the man could not constantly be giving commentaries on recently excavated tombs just for the sake of Daniel’s precarious mental health. He’d heard the Troy program before but it made a better background noise than the sound of the car engine rushing them from one unknown to the next. He pulled his robe over his head so he had to strain to hear the radio, forcing himself to concentrate to comprehend it. Then he translated each sentence he heard into French. That was his world filter, putting what he heard into another language, then sometimes translating it into another one as if he was passing on the information to imaginary friends with no English. French to Arabic was too easy sometimes and he would try to do it in Latin or Hebrew. His Hebrew was very rusty now. He’d only studied it for one term. That was something he could do on his return home, order some books on Ancient Hebrew and get to grips with that language at last. O'Neill was still rubbing his back and the panic was dropping slowly from a peak of white noise inside his mind, to a bearable level of anxiety. O'Neill had been right about not taking another pill.

“Daniel…?”

He pulled the robe from his head and looked up to find O'Neill gazing at him, concern in his brown eyes.

“Jack…?”

“How are you feeling?”

A tremor ran through him and his blood still felt as if it was the consistency of ice water, but the panic spike was definitely dropping to manageable levels. “Okay.”

“Can you sit up?”

There was something quietly relentless about O'Neill. In another life he was probably a physiotherapist making car crash victims push their weakened limbs painfully back towards strength. Tony tended to swing between hitting him for not being ‘normal’ and telling him that ‘normal’ for Daniel was now unachievable. O'Neill seemed to believe in baby steps. He also seemed to believe that Daniel was salvageable. Daniel wondered, if he spent enough time with the man, if such a conviction could eventually become contagious.

He sat up and O'Neill straightened his clothes, re-knotting his tie for him before taking a comb out of his pocket and flicking it dispassionately through Daniel’s hair, trying to make him look as if panic attacks were no part of his life. Daniel had been dressed by other people many times in the past, kindly and not so kindly. When the medication had been cranked brain-deadeningly high to the point where no panic or dementia could reach him through the muffled cloud of sedation, he had been washed by others too, a pinprick of the part of consciousness left to him aware that this was his body, his skin, and that alien fingers were touching it. He knew that good doctors didn’t punish their patients for asking too many questions by increasing their medication to the point where they were zombies, but there had been no one to complain to about Melvin. His acts of spite had always taken place from beneath the cloak of medical diagnosis. Daniel was certainly less trouble when he was injected full of sedatives but he was also safer and less frightened. Sometimes even Daniel could believe the man might just have been acting in his patient’s best interests.

“This is Cheyenne Mountain.”

He was grateful to Carter for waiting until now to look over the seat at him. She gave him a smile that was clearly meant to be encouraging but there was real concern in her eyes. She clearly felt a little guilty about putting him through this. She kept talking as she got out of the car, gabbling a little fast, trying to sound natural and almost managing it, telling him things he wasn’t very interested in about the way the facility had been built in the mountain. He had somehow failed to realize until now that the artifact she wanted to show him was not just in a military installation but also in a military installation deep underground. Feeling his heart rate quicken again he snatched another breath. 

Clearly noticing his distress, she talked even faster: “The outer shell of the buildings is made of three-eighths-inch continuously welded low carbon steel plates which are supported by structural steel frames and metal doors at each building entrance serve as fire doors to help contain fire and smoke. Emphasis on the design of the structure is predicated on the effects of nuclear weapons, however, building design also makes it possible for the complex to absorb the shock of earthquakes.…”

“Carter.” O'Neill gave her a look of exasperation. “You’re giving _me_ claustrophobia here.”

“I just want Doctor Jackson to know it’s safe.”

“Yes, but when you tell someone that all the air is filtered through a system of chemical-slash-biological-slash-radiological filters to remove harmful germs and/or radioactive and chemical particles all it makes that someone think about is radiation, chemical particles and harmful germs. Likewise talk about tonnage of granite and thickness of steel plating is not helpful under these circumstances. If you were trying to help someone get over a fear of flying would you tell them that airplanes don’t just fall out of the sky?”

Carter blinked in obvious confusion. “Yes.”

“Okay. What image do you get in your head when hear the phrase ‘airplanes don’t just fall out of the sky’? Because what I see is an airplane falling out of the sky – usually in a big ball of flame.”

Carter winced in comprehension. “Got you.”

O'Neill’s hand was a comforting warmth on his back, gently steering him out of the car and after Carter. He remembered the man telling Makepeace and Carter that he wasn’t Daniel’s keeper. “Did you tell your partner?” Daniel asked suddenly.

O'Neill looked at him in confusion. “What?”

“Kawalsky. Did you tell him where you were?”

“I’m following a lead.” O'Neill shrugged. “Interviewing a witness.”

Daniel remembered that Rosalita’s son worked in Colorado Springs. “Is the zoo near here?”

Carter looked at him over her shoulder. “Did you want to go there?”

“They have Mexican Wolves.” He felt a little foolish saying it out loud. Tony often told him that he had spent so long in his room by himself that he’d lost a handle on normal social interaction. He’d queried the judgment of a man whose idea of normal social interaction in Daniel’s experience was to punch anyone who disagreed with him. As he remembered, Tony’s rebuttal had been to punch him again. He still felt that he had won that argument even if his bruises would seem to claim otherwise. As O'Neill only raised an eyebrow at him in a way he found simultaneously annoying and sexy, he added doggedly, “And Pallas Cats.”

They were all looking at him now. He realized they definitely failed to see the relevance, waving a hand around a little desperately, he added: “Rosalita’s son works with the wolves. He sends brochures.”

Makepeace looked at him for a moment and then sighed as if an ulcer was starting to fizzle somewhere. “Let’s get you signed in.”

Daniel wrapped his arms around himself defensively as they descended in an elevator deeper and deeper into the mountain. He decided that he disliked the military and particularly disliked the amount of money that had gone into sinking this defense facility into the bowels of the earth which could better have been spent on irrigating African villages or protecting the world’s antiquities. By the time they were twenty-two floors down and still dropping he couldn’t resist mentioning that he could see taxpayer’s money was definitely being well spent ensuring peace and prosperity for everyone in the Colorado area who worked for the US government, and by the time they stepped out of the second elevator – too many hundred feet down for him to want to think about – he and Makepeace were into a full blown argument which Daniel, at least, was really quite enjoying.

O'Neill hissed into his ear: “Have you ever considered that too many years of living with Tony might have given you a programmed response to annoy whichever Alpha male might be in the vicinity?”

Daniel hissed back: “And have you ever considered that for someone who supposedly disapproves of the USAF you spent a lot of your time defending it?”

“I never said I disapproved of the USAF as an entity unto itself. I said I didn’t like what I was doing for them.”

“That’s just semantics.”

“Well, you should know, you could split hairs as an Olympic event.”

Daniel gritted his teeth. “I don’t like the military. I don’t like who they are or what they do. It’s my opinion and I’m entitled to it.”

“Doctor Jackson.”

He wheeled around defensively to find a uniformed man in front of him. The insignia was meaningless to him but he noticed that Carter and Makepeace were both saluting. Intriguingly, O'Neill seemed to be fighting hard not to salute but even he had automatically straightened up at the sight of the man. Daniel couldn’t really blame him. The man wasn’t very tall, was a little round, and was almost completely bald, and yet he had an effortless air of authority about him. More surprising was the kindness in his eyes. 

He held out a hand to Daniel. “Doctor Jackson, I presume?”

“Yes, sir.” It wasn’t the ‘sir’ that a soldier might say, but it felt appropriate all the same. This was someone who deserved some kind of mark of the respect he elicited.

“General George Hammond.” He clasped Daniel’s hand firmly and Daniel was vaguely aware that usually someone like this was introduced by others rather than introducing himself, that he too was being paid a mark of respect. “I can’t tell you how grateful we are that you’ve agreed to help us out with this problem. We certainly appreciate you traveling all this way to take a look at our…artifact.”

Hammond reminded him a little of O'Neill, it was the same mixture of treating him like someone young and easily spooked and so in need of extra kindness, and yet as someone with knowledge that merited respect. It occurred to Daniel that even if he’d arrived wearing his pajamas and robe, his bare feet dusty from the car park concrete, Hammond would have greeted him just like this, as if he was a doctor of Egyptology and had never known the inside of a padded cell.

“I hope I can help.” He darted a quick look at O'Neill and found the man had been watching him tensely, a mixture of anxiety and pride on his face. He was clearly relieved that Daniel had chosen not to be a brat to Hammond.

Hammond beckoned to him and they began to walk along drab gray corridors together. There was some murmured exchange of formalities between Hammond and Makepeace, more saluting, and then Makepeace was gone. Hammond said something appreciative to O'Neill as well.

“It was no trouble, General. It was hardly out of my way.”

Daniel was shocked that O'Neill would attempt levity with someone like Hammond but the man himself only gave O'Neill a quick assessing look of approval. “The geography of Chicago must have altered a little since I was last there.”

“Yes, sir. I hear it’s much smaller now. Apparently from space these days you can’t even see it.”

“I wasn’t aware that it could be viewed from space in the past, Colonel O'Neill.”

O'Neill winced. “That’s Detective O'Neill, sir.”

Hammond’s expression was rueful. “Unfortunately, ‘Detective O'Neill’ can’t be permitted access to the project on which we need Doctor Jackson’s assistance. Colonel O'Neill however…”

O'Neill grimaced. “Understood, sir.”

“I’m sure I don’t need to explain to you the meaning of Top Secret.”

“No, sir.” 

Daniel felt O'Neill’s gaze flicker to him anxiously but he didn’t feel inclined to shout his need to keep his independence from the rooftops, he was too occupied with thinking about what O'Neill had agreed to do, to come back to the organization he had so emphatically rejected, and now to be known by the rank he had left behind, just to help out a person he barely knew.

And then they stepped through a blast door, thick metal that swung back to let them into a room the size of a pyramid interior and he saw it. He knew in that instant why Captain Carter had those shadows under her eyes and those stars in them, and knew also that not one sleepless night or day of frustration had been wasted, because if anything deserved worship it was this, and if anything should compel obsession it was this. He felt the way he felt in the good dreams sometimes, breathless and weightless and floating in a place where no asthma attack could find him, the stars bleeding through the darkness in smeared comet trails of dying light.

“Oh my God.”

The huge stone ring was unique, he saw that at once. There was nothing like it in any civilization he had ever studied, not the writings around the edge, not the luster of the bluish rock from which it had been fashioned, not the shape of it, the way it didn’t just demand that you knelt down and worshipped but that you stepped into it, became one with it, an open maw into which you willingly chose to be devoured. 

“Do you see…?” Carter was squeezing his arm, wanting him to feel it the way she did, the awe, the love, the need to understand it.

“Yes.” He was breathless.

“You understand why…?”

“Yes. Oh yes.” He turned to look at her so she could see his eyes were shining too, that he understood now why she’d brought him here and she’d be right to choose him because he too was not going to willingly leave this place until the mystery of this beautiful object was solved.

She smiled at him in relief, just as if he was a younger brother who had strayed away from her side once too often. “I knew you’d understand.”

They stood there in companionable silence then and looked at the ring, in silent agreement about how beautiful it was and how together they must surely try to unravel the mystery it represented.

The spell was rudely broken as O'Neill said peevishly, “So, what does it actually…do?”

Hammond smiled and patted O'Neill gently on the shoulder. “That, Colonel, used to be the sixty four thousand dollar question. As of the end of this month, it will be the several billion dollar question….”

Daniel tuned them out again as he went forward to touch it. He was vaguely aware that the room was full of soldiers with guns, that there was some observation room above them behind the thick glass of which more people toiled in front of banks of computers, but the ring was no part of this world, it was as out of place here as he was. Looking at it, he was mentally running through every civilization he’d ever studied: language, architecture, philosophy, culture. The ring matched none of them. 

Carter said, “Do you know who made it? What its purpose is?”

Daniel beamed at her over his shoulder. “I have no idea.” Turning back to look at the ring again he couldn’t stop the grin getting wider, the excitement peaking in a way that left no room for panic attacks, this was a lost continent to an explorer, a new species to a naturalist, the best possible present any archaeologist could ask for. “No idea at all.”

 

They showed him the cover stones next and if he hadn’t already been so dazzled by the stone ring he would have been excited enough by those. The hieroglyphs were strange but matched those he and Sarah had found in the tomb and so were ones he was confident he could translate. But then there was the inner track, strange symbols he had never seen anywhere else, similar to the ones on the ring. He gazed at the cover stones raptly while beside him Hammond told him quietly that under normal circumstances they would only have shown him the cover stones, and not the ring, but they wanted to help him in any way they could to crack this thing.

Carter said, “It has this incredible potential energy within it. Off the scale. I took a tiny scraping from the surface of the ring.” As Daniel looked at her aghast she held up her hands. “Tiny, Doctor Jackson. It didn’t damage it, I promise. But we needed to analyze its chemical structure. What we found is that it’s composed from some mineral that has the ability to massively enhance the power of other minerals. Correctly aligned, it should be theoretically possible for it to transmit huge amounts of energy. Perhaps incalculable amounts.”

“So it could be dangerous?” O'Neill put in. 

Hammond nodded gravely. “If we don’t know what we’re doing, yes. We think it’s purpose is not destructive, but…”

“You don’t know for sure.” Daniel had his head on one side as he examined the cover stone. “You think the tomb Sarah and I excavated is connected to the culture that built…” He waved a hand at the direction of the blue-gray ring, “…this?”

“Not necessarily. We think the culture that built the ring may be greater in antiquity than the one that built the tomb you were excavating, however that tomb is the only other place of which we are aware in which there are writings which seem to relate to this particular artifact.”

Carter pointed to the cover stone. “Doctor Meyer, who was here before, until a family emergency called him away, translated the hieroglyphs, but he couldn’t translate this inner track.”

Daniel shrugged. “Well, if he’s an Egyptologist I’m not surprised. These aren’t hieroglyphs. What was his translation for the outer track?”

“Here.” The way Carter said it Daniel suspected she knew it wasn’t much of a translation.

There was a blackboard set up in one corner of the room. The hieroglyphs had been copied onto the board and the translation written underneath them. 

Year 10 of king? Sky. Ra. The Sun Disk. Coffin. Door to Heaven.

Daniel winced at the inaccuracy of it. “That’s not right.” It was almost offensive to him that someone who had supposedly studied Egyptology could have gotten it so wrong. Didn’t these people have any kind of feel for what this unknown scribe had been trying to say? Inscriptions weren’t something scribbled lightly on a piece of paper, they took effort, they took concentration. They always always had something important that they were trying to communicate. 

He picked up the cloth and erased the first words from the blackboard. Wincing again at the next mistake. “That’s an odd choice of words: ‘qebeh’ in this context is curious and then an adjectival sedjem-en-ef with a cleft subject…”

“You can read it?” A man darted forward, eager and curious. “You know what it says?”

“Yes.” Daniel looked at him in mild apprehension. He was only a little older than Daniel, good-looking in an intense kind of way. Daniel realized he hoped O'Neill didn’t think this other guy was good-looking and then mentally scolded himself for being so absurd. O'Neill had been married. He liked women. Even though Daniel felt at least some of the connection between them was sexual, that was probably just another manifestation of Daniel not getting out much. To O'Neill, Daniel was like a puppy that had been ill-treated and who he wanted to make sure was walked and fed and house-trained before he was found a good home. 

Daniel flickered a hand at the translation. “I worked on one like this. It’s a very ancient form of hieroglyphs that seems to have been an offshoot from the first proto-glyphs. It’s much more complicated than the writing found on storage jars in Abydos, for instance, but it hasn’t developed in the way the Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphs we’re more familiar with have done.”

“Rodney McKay.” The man shot out a hand. 

Daniel shook it tentatively. “Daniel Jackson.” He pointed at the hieroglyphs again. “Is this your work?”

“God, no.” McKay looked amused by the idea. “I’m a real scientist. Not one of those weird little college guys in corduroy they bussed in for this stuff.” He looked down at Daniel’s apparel then and winced. “Sorry.”

Daniel thought it was actually quite reassuring that there was someone else in the mountain with less social skills than himself. “You’re a lab rat then?”

McKay grinned at him. “A really good lab rat. One of the ones that had the Skinner boxes sussed by the end of the first hour.”

Daniel’s smile widened. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

McKay patted him on the shoulder. “I get that a lot. So, what does this say then? If it’s some dead guy’s laundry list I may have to kill someone.”

Daniel erased another line of text. “Not ‘coffin’. ‘Sealed and buried’. He wrote quickly, more confident now. If this was all they wanted him to do, he could do it all day. The hieroglyphs had always revealed themselves to him more quickly than they did to others. He understood their rhythms and their reasons. They wanted to be read, after all. Had been inscribed to be understood, not lost and forgotten.

McKay beamed across at Carter. “He’s smart. Good find.”

“He’s translating it.” Carter came forward and Daniel was dimly aware of the hope in her voice. “He actually understands it.”

Daniel stepped back from the blackboard to look at what they had so far. It was so obvious he didn’t understand why the other Egyptologists hadn’t gotten it. He became aware of breath on his neck and turned in surprise to see O'Neill reading curiously over his shoulder. It pleased him that O'Neill was the first one to read it aloud:

“ ‘A million years into the sky is Ra, sun god. Sealed and buried for all time his…’ ”

Daniel erased ‘Door to Heaven’ with a flick of the eraser and wrote up the correct translation clearly. S-T-A-R-G-A-T-E.

“ ‘Stargate’.” O'Neill looked between the military personnel hovering close to Daniel. “This helps you?”

“Yes.” Carter sighed.

O'Neill said, “Isn’t this inscription speaking…metaphorically?”

“Not necessarily.” McKay took Daniel by the arm. “That’s great. Good job. Now, how about this one?” 

Daniel felt a flicker of panic as he was towed away, instinctively looking over his shoulder for O'Neill who followed a swift pace behind. 

“Don’t drag him around like that,” Carter protested.

“I’m just…guiding him,” McKay retorted. 

“He’s a doctor of archaeology. He’s entitled to some respect.”

“I’m a doctor of astrophysics. When was the last time you showed me any respect?”

“The last time you did anything which deserved any respect, which was…oh let me think… never.”

“You know very well that until they brought me onto this project the interface you designed was full of flaws. Your safety margins are way below acceptable levels. You’re the one who wanted to just keep dialing at random until something locked. Which is exactly what they did in 1945 and look what that got them –”

Daniel tried to blot them out and look at what McKay evidently wanted him to study. The symbols from the ring – or Stargate as he now knew it to be called – had been printed out for him to examine in close-up and spread out invitingly on a table.

“If we’d waited for you to come up with a dialing program we would all have died of old age!”

Flinching slightly from Carter’s raised voice Daniel wondered what it was about sexual tension between adult humans that made them yell at one another. If these two had been any more obviously attracted to one another they would have been appearing in a 1930s screwball comedy.

“Your computer model ignores 220 of the 400 feedback signals the Gate can emit during any given dialing sequence. It’s a very poor substitute for the original technology. And I still think that further archaeological investigation might have revealed the original device. You’re just so damned arrogant you won’t accept your fancy computer program isn’t as good as the real thing.”

“I do accept it!” Carter retorted fiercely. “I just think it’s important that we have some means to make the device work, which, if we’d waited around for the ‘safe’ option could be never.”

“Don’t yell around Daniel,” O'Neill said tersely. “He doesn’t like raised voices.”

Daniel looked up at him in surprise because he was actually pretty good at blocking out raised voices after all that time in various institutions, it was sweet of O'Neill to be concerned though. He realized he had gazed at O'Neill for more than a moment too long now, the two of them making unblinking eye contact when one of them really ought to look away.

McKay broke the spell by putting a page of the symbols into Daniel’s hand. “It’s numerological, isn’t it? I mean it has to be. Just work out which one is zero and we can take it from there.”

“It’s pictographic,” Carter retorted. She turned to Daniel with a pleading expression on her face. “They represent words, don’t they? Isn’t that how most early written languages began, with the picture of what they symbolized? And from that they evolved into a word in a pictographic language or a letter in an alphabetical one.”

“Why would it be a word?” McKay demanded. “We know what it’s meant to do.”

“How do you know that?” Daniel demanded.

Carter and McKay looked at one another like guilty children and McKay grimaced. “Was that one of those things we weren’t supposed to tell him?”

Hammond cut in quietly, “Doctor Jackson can be told anything that relates to this project that may be of assistance to him in solving this problem.”

Daniel caught that look of surprise from O'Neill, swiftly followed by that flicker of comprehension from him. Hammond’s tone had sounded only grave to him, but O'Neill’s expression told him that in his own quiet way the general cared about this project as passionately as did Carter. Daniel had a second inkling of how many rules had been bent to bring him here. Of how far out on a limb Hammond must have gone to try to save this project. 

O'Neill turned to Carter. “Why don’t you tell him what you think it does?”

McKay said, “We think it’s a means of traveling through space.”

“And maybe time,” Carter added.

McKay rolled his eyes. “Carter thinks that because Carter is obsessed with the hypotheticals. But I don’t see any tracking system on the ring for calculating exact modules of time, do you? As in the to the second calculation that would be necessary if that was really supposed to be a working part of the mechanism.”

“I’m only saying that if it works the way we think it works then solar flares could have been factored into –”

Making an inarticulate sound, not unlike a snarl, O'Neill held up a hand. “Keep it simple. Daniel doesn’t need a lesson in theoretical astrophysics. Tell him what you know and what you don’t know and what you expect him to come up with. Don’t tell him what you can’t agree on, what you had for breakfast this morning, or anything else that isn’t strictly relevant.”

McKay picked up a pen and sketched on a piece of paper. “Okay. One possible theory is that the figures on the ring are somehow representative of a coordinate in space. Either a name, a number, a planet. We’re not sure exactly what. We do know there are six figures on the cartouche. In order to find a destination in any three dimensional space you need to find two points to determine exact height, two points for width, two points for depth.” He drew a cube, dotted it on each side and then drew lines between them to come up with a point in the center. “Six figures possibly represented by six symbols on the ring.”

Daniel looked curiously at the cube McKay had drawn, then took the pen from him and drew a line from the center of the cube to the far edge of the paper then drew a small circle. “You don’t have a point of origin.”

Carter nodded. “Exactly. Seven symbols have to lock and one of them has to be the symbol for here. But we don’t have any means of telling which one it is and there are only six symbols in the cartouche.”

Daniel got it now. “So, you think you know what it does, and you think you may even know how it does it, but you don’t know what the symbols mean that make it do what it does?”

“Yes.” Carter looked close to hugging him. She held out her wrist and they looked at the hand of her watch sweeping around. “It’s like a wristwatch to an alien. If they could see us wearing one they could probably guess what its purpose was. Even if they found one that was ticking they could probably work out eventually that it measured increments of time. But what if we were all dead and dust and the watch had stopped ticking ten thousand years before? That’s what this ring is.”

Daniel suspected the answer had to be cultural. If he could work out from which culture these symbols had been imported into the Ancient Egyptian cartouche within those hieroglyphs then he would be half way home.

McKay cut in: “In the past, there was an experiment with different symbols used from the ones on this cartouche. I think they may have been arrived at by just spinning it. There are some things the Pentagon won’t even allow us to look at. They got the coordinates to lock and then there was a horrible accident. This blue ‘waterspout’ effect billowed out from the ring and killed three scientists. We’re pretty sure we know why it did that and it’s only dangerous if you’re standing in the way of it. But, that didn’t tend to make the experiment look too much of a success. Not helped by the fact that when they tried to send a guy through on a rope, the rope snapped and the guy was lost.”

“Send him ‘through’?” O'Neill demanded.

Carter sighed. “There was a shimmering field of energy within the ring after the water spout, essentially an event horizon, which Doctor McKay and I think is a way of effectively opening up an artificial wormhole which uses sub-space to disintegrate matter into a form in which it can travel through points in space, presumably reintegrating it at the point of destination.”

“ ‘Presumably’?” O'Neill made no attempt to hide his cynicism.

Daniel winced. “So, it could be just a really fancy way of atomizing your enemies?”

“We hope not.” 

O'Neill looked between them in disbelief. “This is just like the world’s biggest most expensive science project to you two, isn’t it?” He turned to Hammond. “Is this what I pay my taxes for?”

Hammond responded mildly, “Colonel, we really do think this ring is the Earth’s best chance of ever achieving inter-stellar travel. And Doctor Jackson’s translation of the cover stone would seem to suggest that Captain Carter and Doctor McKay have been working on the right lines.”

O'Neill shook his head. “These two have no idea what they’re doing. They know that if you get the right combination you get a big swirly thing that may or may not kill whoever touches it. They don’t know what the combination is. They don’t know what the symbols mean. They don’t know who built it or why or how. They just think it would be a really neat idea if it worked, and every time a soldier stepped through it and got disintegrated they could sit there and make calculations until their geeky little heads exploded.”

McKay looked across at Carter. “Are you sensing some latent hostility here?”

“I don’t like scientists,” O'Neill observed. “And you two are really reminding me why.”

Daniel looked back at the symbols within the cartouche. They looked simultaneously familiar and yet at the same time he knew they were no language he’d never studied. They were ancient, certainly. From an era when the written languages had been comparatively few. What if they were from a civilization that had risen and fallen and left no other trace of its existence? What if there were no other references except this one and the one that he and Sarah had found? Okay, that was why they needed an archaeologist slash anthropologist slash linguist. Someone who could put it in the right context, who understood cross-cultural influence, the way the ancient trade routes had operated to bring about the exchange of ideas, faiths, goods, and tongues. This could be the work of a civilization that had developed terms for which there was no equivalent in Ancient Egyptian. If the people who had built the ring or Stargate had used words that the Ancient Egyptians had adopted intact then they might have transcribed them exactly as written. That had certainly happened with that Hurrian treatise on horse-training by Kikkuli of Mitanni, which had been found at Hatussas. There were words within that Hurrian text in a language which had never been properly identified and seemed to have some Sanskrit elements. No other traces of that language had ever been uncovered and there was still no name for it. This could be the equivalent. He needed to concentrate on the geography, history, and culture of the area and try to work out which civilization it was likely to have come from if not Ancient Egyptian. Do a search for those who had worshipped Star Gods or spheres of the moon… 

He was jolted out of his train of thought by McKay digging him in the ribs: “…I still think it has to be numbers. Like a grid. Doesn’t that look like a ‘one’ to you?”

“Or words, giving the name of the nearest astral body used as a reference,” Carter retorted.

Daniel took a deep breath. “Could you both go away, please?”

As they both opened their mouths to protest O'Neill added firmly: “Now.”

As they looked at one another in confusion, clearly not understanding why Daniel wouldn’t want them there to urge him on to comprehension of their individual theories, a quiet voice said, “Doctor Jackson, would you be more comfortable in an office? We have one prepared for you.”

Hammond. Daniel had forgotten the man was still there, keeping quietly in the background and watching how things unfolded, like a kindly teacher with a particularly unruly kindergarten class. McKay and Carter were starting to argue again, in lowered voices at the moment as they muttered the reasons for the supremacy of their own theories at one another, but he suspected they would both be getting quite loud quite soon. He tried to imagine them in a playground and there was no doubt hair tugging and pinching would have been involved, perhaps before a breathless kiss stolen in a lunchbreak.

“If it’s a name for a planet why would it be written in what you’re saying is a different alphabet from the one in which the inscription on the cover stones was written? Why would one civilization have two different forms of writing in the same era?” McKay tugged Daniel’s arm to get his attention. “That doesn’t happen, does it?”

“Well, actually…” Daniel looked around for O'Neill for help.

“If it’s a pictographic alphabet they could be representative icons.” Carter retorted.

“Or they could be numbers – which is what they are. Seven numbers which form a grid reference in space.”

“Except there are only six of them. And I’ve been studying numbers my whole life. I’ve looked through all the ancient numerical systems I could find and none of them look anything like this, including the ancient Egyptian numbers. That’s why I think they’re pictographic representations of the early names of planets.” Carter also put a hand on Daniel’s arm. “Would you like to tell Doctor McKay how many alphabets evolved from pictures of the objects being described, Doctor Jackson?”

“It’s getting a little Brechtian in here,” O'Neill said shortly. As they all gazed at him in confusion, he looked pointedly at their fingers on Daniel’s arms. “Caucasian Chalk Circle anyone?” They both snatched their hands away as if Daniel was something they were forbidden to touch.

Daniel turned to General Hammond. “An office would be very nice, sir.”

Hammond smiled at him very gently and beckoned to him to follow. “Come this way, son. I think you’ll find it a little more peaceful.”

 

It was a pleasant office. Or as pleasant an office as it was possible to have several hundred feet underground. If it wasn’t exactly a room with a view, it was quite spacious. Of course, it felt more spacious because there was so little in it. He had been giving a PC of sorts but it wasn’t as powerful as the one he had at Gray Gables. (Never, in his mind, had he thought of Gray Gables as ‘home’.) There was a problem requisitioning equipment for him as the office was about to close down and he was a barely legitimate resource. He was on a waiting list for a coffee filter of his own and by everyone’s calculations he should be due to get it about a week after the program was mothballed for lack of progress. Daniel had never in his life had so many people say ‘No pressure’ to him while peering anxiously over his shoulder to see if he was any nearer to solving the problem.

“Here.” 

Daniel looked up from his study of the ‘gate symbols to find McKay standing in the doorway. The man held up coffee and a donut. 

“You missed lunch.”

“Oh.” Daniel looked at his watch and noticed lunch had come and gone some four hours since.

McKay grimaced. “O'Neill sent me to get you and I was going to but then I thought I might interrupt your chain of thought just as you were getting what those symbols meant so I kind of kept on walking. But now I feel guilty.” He put the coffee and donut down on his desk. 

“It’s okay. I can’t really cope with the canteen place anyway.” Daniel had taken off his jacket and hung it on the back of his chair. The t-shirt he was wearing did nothing to conceal the yellowing bruises on his arms and wrists and he saw McKay notice them. 

The man winced. “I didn’t do that, did I? I didn’t mean to drag you around, I was just trying to…”

“It wasn’t you.” Daniel gave him a reassuring smile and took a grateful sip of the coffee. It was hot and very strong and he felt the caffeine kick in very satisfactorily. “Thanks. This is just how I like it.”

“Carter said you were supposed to be on decaf but I figured that was just some cruel joke she was playing, right? I mean – no one really drinks decaf.”

“Not me.” Daniel waited politely for McKay to go. He liked the man a lot but he had the social skills of an Asperger’s sufferer.

McKay sat on the edge of his desk and automatically turned the glyphs around to examine them. “I know they’re numbers.”

“Captain Carter knows they’re names.”

“What do you know?”

Daniel sighed and took another sip of coffee. “That all the people who’ve been so nice to me for the past week are going to be out of a job if I can’t work out what they mean.”

McKay winced again. “We’d just be reassigned. We’re not going to be panhandling for nickels in the street or anything.” He broke off a piece of Daniel’s donut and began to eat it thoughtfully. “What was it like? In the psychiatric hospital?”

“Different.” Daniel took another sip of coffee. He thought of the sound of the key turning in the lock at night, the sensation of being held down while a needle was injected into his vein, people talking over him while he sat there in a drugged stupor trying to remember the names of the pharaohs and barely able to count the pigeons pecking for crumbs on the lawn outside. He closed his eyes. “Like having a nightmare and not being able to wake up.”

“So, talking about it probably isn’t something you like to do then?” McKay got up from his desk a little sheepishly and offered him the half a donut that was left to him. “Do you want me to get you another one of these?”

Daniel wasn’t quite sure why he liked the guy as much as he did, McKay was arrogant, unreasonable, tactless, and selfish. He had been brilliant his whole life and was happy to share his knowledge of just how brilliant he was, but there was also a vulnerability about him that was oddly appealing. In fact the more time he spent with the other people on this project, the more convinced he became that he was no crazier than anyone else. He barely hid a smile now. “No, it’s fine.”

“I’ll leave you in peace, shall I?” McKay headed for the doorway, still looking at the glyphs and clearly still in two minds as to whether or not he should point out to Daniel yet again all the reasons why they had to represent numbers.

O'Neill’s tone was ominous: “That would be a big ten-four.”

McKay gave Daniel a quick ‘yikes’ look and then sped out of the office with surprising speed.

Daniel looked up at O'Neill and tried hard to stop himself smiling. Although seeing the man always made him feel better he tried not to make his feelings too obvious. It was a crush, and they both knew it, the kind of thing teenagers got, and he should have grown out of it by now, but he did try to hang onto some semblance of self-respect. He could have sketched O'Neill with his eyes closed, that was how well he knew his face. He made sure it was the last image he focused on before he went to sleep, as comforting to him as a nightlight to a child. O'Neill had become his place of safety, the still eye in the center of the storm that was his life. As long as O'Neill was around he never really felt overwhelmed by anything, even though he was probably under more pressure now than he had been for years. It was a very long time since anyone had relied on him for anything.

“Hi.” It came out a little shy and he hastily looked down at his notes, trying to sound matter of fact as he added, “I think McKay’s a little scared of you.”

O'Neill shrugged. “Well, I did used to kill people for a living.”

Daniel felt a quick defensive flare of anger. “No, you didn’t. You were trying to…do good. When you stopped believing you were doing good, you stopped doing what they were paying you to do. You chose another career where you were helping people instead.”

As O'Neill took the gun from his holster and laid it on the desk. Daniel flinched from it instinctively. O'Neill said quietly, “You hate it, don’t you?”

He felt like a heel, after all O'Neill had done for him couldn’t he manage one little white lie? But the answer came unbidden and unwanted by either of them. “It just doesn’t do anything else. You can cut bread with a knife, chop wood with an axe. What other function does a gun have except to kill? Every one made is built to induce fear or steal life.”

“Or save lives,” O'Neill countered.

“With the threat of death, yes. Or the act of murder. Judge, jury, and executioner all in one tiny bullet.”

O'Neill sighed and sat next to him. Daniel felt his warmth against his side. This time when he looked at him he knew he hadn’t hidden the depth of his infatuation. “I’m sorry.”

O'Neill reached out and ran his fingers through Daniel’s hair, tilting his head back so he could examine his eyes more closely, the action oddly dispassionate. The way an adult would look at a child’s face to see if it needed washing, Daniel thought. Still he was grateful to be touched by him, even like this. O'Neill said, “Don’t apologize for saying how you feel.”

Daniel lowered his gaze. “I just don’t like guns. It doesn’t mean I don’t like you.” As the words hung there he added hastily: “Or Captain Carter. Or General Hammond. Or Kawalsky.”

The moment hung and then O'Neill ruffled his hair gently. “I know.”

Daniel missed the warmth of his hand when he took it away from his head. It was all he could do not to rub his face against O'Neill like a cat asking to be stroked. Jackson, you’ve got it bad he told himself, but even that didn’t seem to help, every time he looked into O'Neill’s brown eyes, he felt himself slip a little further into the deep waters of infatuation. When the phone began to ring, even though he knew who it was, it was almost a relief.

 

O'Neill guessed that naturalists who got to return endangered species to the wild after nursing them back to health got the same kind of feeling that he did watching Jackson in Cheyenne Mountain. There was the pleasure and the pride, and the definite tinge of sadness because this exotic creature had given you its trust but now didn’t need you any more. The guy was unrecognizable from the beaten up drugged up wreck he’d had to physically pull out of bed and push under the shower. Certainly, there were several nervous physical tics, his hands were shaky, his heart-rate was irregular, he got sweats and shivers from time to time, but the difference now was that they affected him only the way it affected a man without an umbrella when a storm passed overhead. The downpour was momentarily drenching but it was simply a case of waiting for it to pass and then drying out afterwards. 

Jackson took his pills, as he’d evidently got into the habit of taking them, randomly and when he remembered, which O'Neill was certain would have formed no part of any responsible medical program of recovery. Perhaps Tony had been trying to do the best he could for his stepbrother in his own warped way, but sticking a handful of anti-hallucinogenics and anti-anxiety pills into his pocket every morning and leaving him to get on with it was not a recovery program O'Neill could get behind. 

As someone who was now working for the USAF, Jackson had to undergo regular assessments from their physicians and, although he’d never had much time for psychiatrists, O'Neill admired the way Mackenzie looked through the sticky handful of pills Jackson held out to him with barely a twitch of his jaw. Without skipping a beat he put away his stethoscope, asked Jackson which ones he found the most beneficial for his more common symptoms, quietly confiscated all but two kinds and handed him his emergency cellphone number in case he needed extra medication at short notice. He then introduced Jackson to every dispenser in the infirmary and told them which pills he was on and which ones they could prescribe for him if he needed them at short notice. Jackson had looked a little twitchy at having his pills taken away from him. O'Neill suspected he had a love-hate relationship with them, hated being made to take them when he didn’t want to, but started to panic if he was cut off from them completely. But when Mackenzie had stressed how quickly pills could be dispensed to him if he needed them, he had accepted it. Probably because he so resented any time away from working on the mystery of what he and Carter were now poetically referring to as the ‘Stargate’ that every other concern was dampened. So, with commendable smoothness, Mackenzie had introduced some kind of control over the way Jackson medicated himself, and put a barrier between him and the stronger kinds of medication while insisting it was no kind of barrier at all. 

One event guaranteed to send Jackson burrowing for his remaining pills was his daily phone-call from his stepbrother. What had possessed him to give Tony his number was beyond O'Neill anyway. As far as O'Neill could tell this call involved ten minutes of a furious Tony screaming at him down the wire while Jackson sat there, a muscle clenching and unclenching in his jaw while he made non-committal responses. Although he knew part of what made the ritual so difficult for Jackson was the thought of anyone overhearing, O'Neill couldn’t help hovering within earshot sometimes, just to get a handle on what mindfuckery Tony was up to now. 

As far as he could tell, Tony had no clever psychological plan in mind at all, he was just unraveling back there in that huge dark house, dependent on Jackson, ironically, perhaps, in a way that Jackson had never truly become dependent on him despite Tony pretty much making it his life’s work to foster that dependency. Tony would bombard Jackson with reminders of how ungrateful he was, how fucked up, dangerous, delusional, psychotic, unsafe to be let out without a keeper, incompetent, brain-addled, hopeless, useless, and just plain nuts he was. He would talk about what it had done to Zinnia and himself to have to live with Jackson’s psychosis for all these years and how the USAF must be out of their tiny minds to even think about employing him for anything more complicated than washing the damned dishes. Another approach was to tell Jackson that once they’d sucked his mind dry of whatever information might be left in it, they’d kill him and dump his body in a ditch.

“Why else would they choose you, you stupid little fucker, unless they needed someone for this job who no one would notice was gone when they made him disappear?”

O'Neill’s role during this phonecalls was to resist the urge to snatch the phone out of Jackson’s hand and tell Tony where to go and shove his paranoid delusions. Sometimes he managed it. Sometimes he didn’t.

Today, looking at the phone which had once again ended up in his hand and listening to the dull buzz of the dead line, O'Neill gave Jackson an apologetic wince as he replaced the handset in its cradle. “Sorry.”

Jackson sighed and looked at his watch. “Six minutes before you cracked. That’s a personal record for you, isn’t it?”

“You know he’s talking crap, right?”

The smile Jackson gave him was nervous, a little appeasing. “Sure.” But he looked pale and stressed and O'Neill wasn’t surprised when he automatically started to fumble for his pills. 

Gritting his teeth, O'Neill said, “You need to cut the cord.”

Washing down a pill with nervous gulps of cold coffee, Jackson said: “He made me talk to Melvin this morning. He says he’s going to insist the Air Force stops exploiting my vulnerable psyche. He says they’re endangering my life by tampering with my medication. Apparently he’s been faxing Doctor Mackenzie every day.”

“He can rant and rave all he likes. He has no power.”

“I shouldn’t have just left though.” Jackson sighed. “I need to go back and get my things. Explain to Tony and Zinnia face to face that I’m not coming back. I owe them that.”

“You can’t live here.” O'Neill looked around the windowless room in horror. Jackson was making strides in battling with his mental illness, certainly, not least because he was so obsessed with decoding the writing on the ‘Stargate’ that he wasn’t thinking about anything else, but this was a short-term job at which he would either succeed or fail before the end of the month, and several hundred feet down a mountain was no place for someone to live who had spent too many years of his life in institutions.

“I don’t mean here. The project is about to close anyway. I mean you were right all along and I can’t live with Tony. I have to get well enough that even Melvin can’t say I need to be hospitalized. I need to get my life back.” Jackson looked up at him, trying to smile but not quite managing it. “Last night I woke up with an idea I wanted to try out, and I opened the door of my room and there was an airman outside to make sure I didn’t wander anywhere I wasn’t supposed to go – and I realized I had more freedom here than I have at Gray Gables or White Towers. There may be an airman outside my room here but I know he isn’t going to come into my room and…” He shrugged and O'Neill winced inwardly because this had always been a danger, that once Jackson stepped back through the looking-glass he would realize just how abnormal his life had been. Jackson looked up at him. “Am I going to get you fired?”

“I’m on leave.”

“In the middle of a murder investigation?”

“I’m taking some personal time.”

Jackson grimaced at having made him say that, ducking his head apologetically then giving him one of those looks that repaid O'Neill for every minute he’d spent in this place being bored and frustrated and uncomprehending of everything Carter and McKay and often even Jackson had just said to him.

“I need to talk to your family solicitor.”

Jackson looked wary. “Why?”

“Because I think it’s pertinent to our enquiries.”

“Why should it be?” 

O'Neill narrowed his eyes. “Which one of us is the policeman here?”

“You’re on leave.”

O'Neill picked up the phone and handed it to Jackson imperiously. “Tell him you give him permission to discuss your financial affairs with me.”

Jackson put the handset back on the phone. “I don’t.”

Mentally counting to ten, O'Neill said, “Okay, answer me this: supposing you prevent Kawalsky and I from gaining access to vital evidence that proves who killed Sha’re Farouk and because of that the killer gets away with it and kills someone else. How would that make you feel?”

There was a long pause before Jackson sighed in defeat. “This really is about Sha’re’s death? It’s not just about you wanting to interfere in my life and try to get back at Tony and Melvin?”

O'Neill gazed at him for a long moment. “Yes, it is, but what are you saying? Are you saying you know they’ve robbed you?”

“I don’t care about the money.” Jackson didn’t meet his eye. “Nick didn’t care about the money. If it’s useful to them why shouldn’t they have it as much as us? We didn’t earn it. I don’t care where Melvin got the money from to build White Towers. I don’t care where Zinnia got the money from to buy Gray Gables. I don’t care how much there is left in my trust fund. If you’re thinking about trying to prosecute them for any money that may be missing I can tell you right now I’ll go into court and I’ll testify that I gave them permission to borrow anything that may be gone. Is that clear?”

“It’s clear.” O'Neill left a beat. “It’s nuts, of course…”

Unexpectedly, Jackson said, “Tony’s just always wanted some…structure in his life. He’s never really had anything he had to do so he’s never really had any sense of achievement.” He looked down at himself. “I guess I’m his life’s work and I don’t give him too much of a glow of accomplishment. He’s quite smart in his own way, but not in a way his teachers ever recognized. His school reports were always terrible.”

O'Neill was already heading for the door when he found himself hesitating. “Are you going to be okay here for a few days?”

Jackson nodded. “Can I call you if I’m not?”

“Of course.” He moistened his lips. Jackson looked a little thin and shabby and his new clothes were creased and still really didn’t fit him properly at any point, but he was sitting in an office working on a government project and no one was going to beat him or rape him however bad a day they might be having. He did feel a sense of achievement about that. “What used to happen when you both came home from school and he had all those ‘F’s and you had all those ‘A’s?”

Jackson flinched. “It was a long time ago.”

O'Neill sighed inwardly. “I’ll be back before you know it.”

“Okay.” 

The look in Jackson’s eyes almost made him crack. He kept looking at O'Neill as if he had all the answers, but O'Neill was a guy whose judgment he didn’t think anyone should trust. He kept reminding Jackson that he’d made bad decisions in the past but Jackson didn’t seem to be able to grasp it. Daniel…damnit, Jackson – if he kept calling him that in his head it did at least keep some kind of critical distance between them – despite being abused and drugged and in all likelihood robbed by the people who should have protected him, had an absolute morality, regular as a metronome, that no amount of unhappy life experience could alter. He possessed a sense of what was right and wrong that was like the sun rising in the east and setting in the west, but he still looked to O'Neill for some certainty. O'Neill looked into Jackson’s blue eyes and he saw a stranger reflected there, this hero who was so brave and compassionate and reliable and…decent. But when Jack O'Neill looked in a mirror he saw a man who’d pulled the trigger once too often when he hadn’t known for certain it was the right thing to do and whose son had paid the price for his allegiance to the law of the gun.

He wondered if he just leaned forward and kissed Jackson, if the guy would finally buy a clue. If he came right out and said, “I find you desirable. Okay? As in want to fuck you. Just like your bastard abusive stepbrother. I’m really no better than he is.” 

Except he liked it, that was the trouble, liked the reflection of himself he saw in Jackson’s eyes, and wanted to be that man for a little longer, even though he was an illusion, even though he’d never existed. In the way Hammond talked to him, the way he conferred with O'Neill as if his opinion mattered, as if he was some charity kid at an exclusive school in whom the headmaster saw some spark of greatness, in the way Jackson looked at him as if he was smarter and kinder and braver and just plain better than anyone else the guy had ever met. In all those ways they were trying to make him something he wasn’t, trying to pretend he was what they saw not what he knew himself to be. Sometimes their conviction was so compelling, he almost believed them himself.

“I don’t need your permission to talk to your solicitor.” He said it almost brusquely. “Three people are dead.”

Jackson blinked at him in confusion. “Three people?”

“Nicholas Ballard. Ivana Novakovitch. Sha’re Farouk.”

“I thought Ivana was killed by her boyfriend? That’s what Zinnia said. And why are you connecting Nick with Sha’re’s death unless…” His eyes widened. “Unless you think it was me.”

“I don’t,” O'Neill said quickly. “I just think…” They may have died because of you. No, he couldn’t say that aloud. “They could be connected. We don’t know for sure. At the moment we’re investigating that possibility.”

Except, there was absolutely no physical evidence of any kind linking Tony Ballard-Green with any of the murders. No hair or clothes fibers that could be traced back to him that proved anything at all. No skin under their fingernails because there had been no struggle. No physical evidence would have been left upon the assailant except for their blood and as they hadn’t been killed in the killer’s home or transported in his vehicle all the main areas for forensic evidence were denied to them. The women had already been unconscious from a blow to the head when they were strangled to death. And they had been strangled by someone wearing gloves, whose prints could therefore not be said to conclusively match the marks left on Jackson’s throat, which had been made by ungloved fingers. Another difference was that the motivation for the restriction of Jackson’s windpipe had undoubtedly been sexual in nature as it had taken place during intercourse – and intercourse where the consent area was gray at best. Yet, the profiler who’d looked at the deaths of Sha’re and Ivana had been adamant that there seemed to be no sexual motivation in this case. There was none of the frenzy or savagery associated with a crime of passion, none of the fetish behavior associated with a serial killer and his need to leave his mark upon the victim. They had been killed because someone wanted them dead, but the killer’s motives for wanting them dead had left no clue upon their corpses. Only in the case of Ballard was there the sense of a chaotic mind at work, of someone overwhelmed by anger or taken by surprise, but even there, where there should have been all kinds of physical evidence there had been very little. No tire track that didn’t come from a family member, the prints in the blood made by a common Nike running shoe whose treads when examined had revealed no idiosyncrasies of any kind. None of the little signs of wear and tear that could make a footprint as individual as a fingerprint. No. The forensic examiner had come to the reluctant conclusion that the Nikes had been put on only minutes prior to the crime, had been worn to commit the crime, and then discarded, and discarded with such thoroughness that they had never come to light. 

O'Neill glanced across at Jackson who was still watching him with that sorrowful expression in his eyes. “I don’t think it’s you. I’ve never thought it was you.”

“I had blackouts. In the hospital.” Jackson slumped in defeat. “Like the ones where I killed my dog.”

“We don’t even know for sure you did kill your dog,” O'Neill pointed out. “You woke up with a dead dog lying next to you. There’s no evidence you’re the one who killed it.”

“It makes no sense it being anyone else.”

He tried to think how to phrase it, walking around the room while Jackson watched him in confusion. He ended up by the open door and closed it firmly before turning back to him. “I need to know the truth. Not your interpretation of it. And not your sanitized version out of some misguided loyalty to your so-called family. Tell me again what happened with your grandfather and his committal?”

Long nervous fingers played with a pen, turning it over as delicately as if it was made of eggshell. “I’m not too sure myself. There was a dig we were on. Some pyramid he found. He left me in the camp because he thought the structure was unstable. I wanted to go with him. I waited and waited and the local guide kept fetching me back when I tried to go after him. Finally, I managed to sneak away and I headed after Nick. There was a loud crashing sound and I ran and ran towards it and found the pyramid had collapsed, just like he’d said it might. I managed to find him and pull the stones off him and he was okay – better than okay, full of excitement and waving this beautiful crystal skull. He said he’d been to a different place. That he’d spoken to a different race. Giant aliens, he said. I thought it was the blow to the head and so did all the doctors who examined him. He brought the skull back, and gave lectures about what he’d seen, and no one believed him, no one would listen to him. He started to mistrust his own sanity and Melvin told him he wasn’t a suitable guardian for me any more. He signed himself into Melvin’s care and I went to live with Zinnia.”

“And Tony.” O'Neill prompted. He knew all about the crazy tale about the crystal skull and the giant aliens. Knew that Nicholas Ballard had given Melvin Green the excuse to diagnose Jackson as schizophrenic. Being the direct descendent of someone who had seen visions and heard voices, and generally exhibited signs of schizophrenic behavior, Jackson had become an all too likely candidate for the same illness. “You went to live with Zinnia and Tony.”

“Yes.”

“When you were twelve years old.”

“Yes.” Jackson darted him a look of exasperation. “We’ve been through this. You know all this.”

“Did you have your own room?”

There was hurt and reproach in the blue eyes that O'Neill was being so coldly formal, acting like a policeman and making him answer these unpleasant questions. “No. I shared with Tony.”

“Who was seventeen when you were twelve?”

“Yes.” The fingers were fluttering more nervously now and O'Neill wasn’t at all surprised when Jackson furtively found another pill and swallowed it quickly.

“Did he or did he not engage in sexual acts with you or persuade or force you to engage in sexual acts with him during this time?”

A real burn of anger from Jackson now. “None of your damned business.”

O'Neill strode towards him angrily and Jackson instinctively flinched. That was enough to stop him in his tracks and he had to snatch a breath as well. What made it worse was that Jackson had been right to flinch, he really did have a lot of rage in him and the fact it was on Jackson’s behalf didn’t mean it might not erupt all over him if there was no one else around to yell at. He tried to keep his voice even: “It provides a motive for wanting to invalidate your testimony, Daniel. It provides a motive for wanting you to seem too unreliable for your word to count. If he was doing things to you he shouldn’t have been doing when he was seventeen and you were twelve, I presume he was also doing them when you were thirteen and he was eighteen. Or, in other words, when you were a minor and he wasn’t. Do you know what kind of jail term that carries?”

As Jackson continued to look at him with reproach, as if he was the one being cruel for mentioning these events, O'Neill rolled his eyes in exasperation before quoting the relevant paragraphs:

“ ‘Section 2243 – Sexual abuse of a minor or ward. Whoever, in the special maritime and territorial jurisdiction of the United States or in a Federal prison, knowingly engages in a sexual act with another person who has attained the age of 12 years but has not attained the age of 16 years, and is at least four years younger than the person so engaging, or attempts to do so, shall be fined under this title, imprisoned for not more than 15 years, or both.’ Did you tell anyone?”

Jackson bowed his head. “It was just – I don’t think he knew it was –”

“Wrong?” O'Neill prompted grimly. “Oh, I think he probably did, Daniel. Even if he didn’t know it was wrong when he was seventeen – which I doubt – he sure as hell knew it at eighteen. Had you threatened to tell someone if Tony didn’t stop?”

Jackson closed his eyes. “Yes.”

“I don’t care how bad Tony’s grades were, I’m sure he could use a library well enough to look up what the jail term was for what he was doing if he got caught. He could kill you to keep you quiet, of course, but it made a lot more sense to just discredit you.”

Jackson said fiercely, “I thought policemen were supposed to work on evidence. Not supposition and prejudice?”

“You don’t think Tony would kill a dog to stop himself doing up to fifteen years in jail?”

Jackson opened his mouth to refute and then closed it again. “How do you explain the blackouts? The hallucinations? They were real. I mean…unreal. I saw things that weren’t there. Not just at home but in the hospital as well.”

“Did Tony visit you in the hospital?”

“Yes.”

“Occasionally or regularly?”

“Regularly.” Jackson wrapped his arms around himself as if to keep out O'Neill and his unwanted questions, not to mention the bad memories they evoked. “Most weekends.”

“Did he have sex with you on those visits?”

Jackson put a hand up to his face. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Did he give you anything to eat or drink?”

“Sometimes.” Jackson kept his hand in front of his face and O'Neill noticed the way it was trembling. He had undone a lot of good work in the past ten minutes. “He used to bring me coffee in a flask or Coke. Or sandwiches or chocolate. He was nice to me.” He darted a fierce look of reproach at O'Neill. “Sometimes. Sometimes he was nice to me.”

O'Neill wondered how affection starved you had to be before Tony’s level of ‘niceness’ became at least tolerable if not actually welcome. There were lots of bitter things he wanted to say, questions he wanted to ask about what Tony had made Jackson do before he paid him off with a candy bar to alleviate his conscience. Instead he said quietly, “He could have drugged the coffee.”

“Why are you saying all this?” Jackson shouted at him. He put a shaking hand up to his face to hide the tears, but O'Neill saw them glistening on his eyelashes, and tricking down his cheekbone. “What good does it do to talk about any of it now?”

“Because there may be nothing wrong with you!” O'Neill shouted back. “There may never have been anything wrong with you!”

Jackson wiped his hand angrily across his eyes. “You’re crazier than I am if you think I’m sane.”

“I do think you’re sane,” O'Neill looked into his eyes. “I think you’re the sanest person I’ve ever met.”

“That’s because you’re a fucking homicide detective who spends his days interviewing psychopaths!” Jackson gazed back at him, eyes revealing reproach, anger, and longing.

O'Neill realized he had less self-control than he’d ever guessed because he couldn’t stop himself from doing what he was about to do. “That must be it,” he said faintly. Then he leant forward and kissed Jackson very gently on the lips. They tasted of salt from his tears, the bitter richness of coffee, and a few grains of sugar from the donut he’d been eating when O'Neill walked into the room. Jackson closed his eyes and opened his mouth, leaning into the kiss and O'Neill found him deepening it, tender and full of yearning. And then he realized what he was doing and to whom, and pulled back. “I’m sorry,” he said breathlessly.

Jackson opened his eyes slowly, the lashes lifting to reveal a gaze that was dreamy and shocked at the same time. “I’m not.”

O'Neill backed up. “I have to… I have to go. I shouldn’t have done that. I had no right to… I’m sorry.” He couldn’t bear to look at Jackson’s face, seeing him looking so young and so vulnerable, gazing after O'Neill with all that longing and regret. “I’ll be back in a couple of days.” He didn’t wait for Jackson’s response, opening the door quickly and diving for the corridor as if it were dry land after a tempest. As he leaned against it, he could hear his heart beating much too fast and still taste the salt and sweetness on his mouth from where it had brushed so gently against Jackson’s warm soft lips. What? his conscience demanded. After stirring up a hornet’s nest of bad memories in the guy and then kissing him without permission or explanation, even though you know Jackson has a crush and is so emotionally vulnerable only a complete bastard would have done what you just did. Are you really going to just walk out of here?

“No,” O'Neill told his conscience shortly. “I’m going to run.” And then he was all but sprinting for the elevator, desperate to get back into the sunlight in the hope that finally back above ground he might be able to make sense of the turmoil in his mind and heart. 

***

Bratac turned out to be one of those people with such effortless authority that O'Neill found himself unable to take control of the interview as he’d intended. Or perhaps it was because he was still reeling mentally and physically from that kiss. He kept seeing the look in Daniel’s eyes – he couldn’t seem to think of him as ‘Jackson’ any more – all that love and longing, and not even a glimmer of hope. 

He couldn’t estimate Bratac’s age very accurately or his nationality. His neat iron gray beard and moustache gave him a vaguely Spanish appearance, but as if he had come over with the Conquistadors and been trading with the Native Americans ever since. As for his age, he could have been fifty or seventy. Despite a pronounced limp he still gave an overriding impression of grace and fitness. His build was wiry and he had an air of concentration about him that was more than a little disconcerting, not helped by the way his dark eyes were so shrewd they looked as if they could see straight into his mind.

After O'Neill introduced himself and explained his purpose in calling, Bratac motioned him imperiously to the couch and fetched them both some black China tea. That O'Neill might not want to drink black tea didn’t seem to have occurred to him and after one quelling look from the older man’s eyes, O'Neill decided that he did want to drink black tea after all. When told that it was beneficial to the kidneys, O'Neill found himself nodding and sipping meekly.

When he proffered a photograph of Daniel and mentioned his name, Bratac studied it intently before saying gravely: “Yes, I remember him.”

“You were an orderly at White Towers?”

Another searching gaze, looking to see if he was being tested. “Not White Towers. At the time Doctor Green had only a small clinic with less than thirty residential patients. White Towers was built later, after the death of Doctor Ballard.”

He couldn’t identify his accent either. Not American, yet not obviously anything else either. “It was a long time ago,” he offered. “Is there any reason why you remember Doctor Jackson so well?”

“I heard he is a doctor now.” Bratac took a thoughtful sip of tea. “Of archaeology? Like his grandfather?”

“Yes. And a couple of other things as well. Apparently he’s very smart.” O'Neill put down his tea. “As I was saying…”

“It’s fifteen years since I last saw him. Yes. I remember him because he troubled me. He troubles me still. I read of the death of his grandfather and I wondered if perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps he was dangerous after all. His grandfather was a good man. I would not like to have been responsible for…”

“No one thinks he did it.” O'Neill leaned forward for emphasis.

“But now there is another death, is there not? You are here because something else has occurred and you are a homicide detective.”

“A girl died, yes.”

“And you think he may have done it?”

“No.” O'Neill had never felt such a strong urge to confess to anyone. If this man had gone into the police force he would have had murderers purring to him of all their crimes, grateful for the chance to unburden their aching consciences.

Bratac’s gaze was impossibly shrewd and O'Neill wondered what he had been in the past. If he had been a soldier once, or a priest. “Why are you here if not because you suspect him of wrongdoing?”

“When you knew him? Did you think he was crazy?”

Bratac shook his head, eyes thoughtful. “I thought he was sane. And it troubled me to think of this boy amongst madmen when there was nothing wrong with him. I took it upon myself to interfere. I thought I was saving him. Perhaps it would have been better if he’d stayed where he was.”

“So he didn’t seem mentally ill to you?”

“No.” Bratac met his gaze. “As I told the woman who interviewed me. As I told the man who interviewed me. As I have already told you.”

“What man? Makepeace?”

“No.” Bratac paused for a moment as if searching his memory. “Teal’c, his name was.”

“The private detective?”

“Is that what he is?” There was cynicism in Bratac’s eyes. “I thought he was a soldier.”

“Did he tell you he was a soldier?”

“He showed me an ID. I didn’t notice what was on it. I decided that with one such as him, if he chose to enter the house he would do so, whatever his reason for doing so might be. I answered his questions and –”

His cellphone cut Bratac off and O'Neill winced an apology as he checked the number calling him, heart skipping a beat as he wondered if Daniel was missing him already. It worried him to realize how disappointed he was to see the call was from Kawalsky. “I’m sorry. I have to take this.” 

Bratac nodded and moved swiftly into the kitchen, graceful despite his game leg. O'Neill said, “O'Neill?”

“I’m just leaving Doctor Gardner’s house.”

Again there was that excitement in Kawalsky’s voice. He wished he could remember what that felt like, the moment when you learned something new and the pieces of the puzzle began to fall into place. He couldn’t get far enough away from the dead or the living in this one. “Anything new?”

“She didn’t hire Teal’c.”

“What?” Realizing Bratac would be able to hear him in the kitchen, O'Neill tried to lower his voice. “What?”

“He came to her. He said he was working for the Air Force and knew all about her hacking into their mainframe. He asked her about the dig in Egypt. Wanted to know all about her case notes, wanted to see all the photographs. He asked her a lot of questions about Jackson. About his behavior.”

“If she thought he was crazy?”

“More if she thought he changed after they found the artifacts that were ‘lost’. She said Teal’c wouldn’t admit they hadn’t been lost in the plane crash but the way he spoke about them it was obvious he knew about them. She got the impression he’d handled them recently. He wasn’t an archaeologist but he knew all about Jackson’s ability to translate the tablet. He wanted to know if he had suddenly seemed able to translate it after they found the second cache of artifacts. She said he took a lot of convincing that Jackson had always had this facility for languages, that she thought it was something he’d inherited from his parents. She said she didn’t tell him the truth.”

“What is the truth?” O'Neill’s mind was whirling like a kaleidoscope. What the hell did those artifacts have to do with these murders? And what did Teal’c know that they didn’t that made him ask those specific questions? Did the truth about this lie in Egypt after all? And who was he really working for if not Gardner? It had to be the Air Force, but if that was the case, why hadn’t Carter, Makepeace or Hammond mentioned him?

Kawalsky coughed. “Well, she was a little embarrassed about admitting it, but she said that Jackson’s grandfather told her that when Jackson was born his mother had asked Thoth to give him the gift of tongues, and he had. She said that he was born multi-lingual.” O'Neill knew very well that ‘multi-lingual’ had nothing to do with oral sex, but remembering the perfect shape of Daniel’s mouth he couldn’t stop his mind momentarily darting in that direction before he yanked it back to the topic in hand. “Gardner said that when she saw Jackson with people in the Middle East she found herself believing what his grandfather had told her. She says he has an incredible facility with languages, they speak to him in a way they just don’t speak to her. She said she told Teal’c that but he wasn’t convinced. He kept asking her about Jackson’s behavior on the dig and whether or not it had changed, and if he’d had any episodes, if there were any suspicious deaths. She said he even asked her something really weird, but she figured he must have been joking.”

“What?” O'Neill enquired.

“He asked her if Jackson’s eyes glowed.”

 

He listened to the interview with Bratac on the way back to Chicago. The man had been happy for him to tape their conversation, he said. He made it a point of honor to never say anything of anyone he was not content for others to hear. If he could not always be kind he could at least always be honest.

“Did you meet Tony Ballard-Green when Daniel Jackson was a patient at Doctor Green’s clinic?”

“I did. On many occasions.”

“What did you think of him?”

“I thought it unwise of Doctor Green to allow him to have unsupervised private visits with the boy when Daniel’s condition was always so much worse after those visits.”

“So he did manifest symptoms of schizophrenia while a patient there?”

“Only when on his medication or after a visit from his stepbrother.”

“Did you suspect his stepbrother of any specific wrongdoing?”

A hesitation before that quiet: “I did.”

“What kind of wrongdoing?”

Another hesitation. “The medication he was on made Daniel dizzy. Twice he fell in the shower and so I was asked to supervise him as he bathed. He didn’t object. He came to trust me. I think he became fond of me and I know I became fond of him as might a man feel affection for a grandson.” O'Neill remembered the look Bratac had darted in his direction at that point had dared O'Neill to even consider thinking there may have been anything untoward in his affection for the child left in his care. O'Neill certainly didn’t dare. He knew an honest man when he was talking to one. “After his stepbrother’s visits, except on the occasions when he swiftly became too agitated to be coherent, he would want a shower. There were always more bruises on his body than when he had showered in the morning before his stepbrother’s visit.”

“Bruises where?” Even though he’d guessed this was coming and thought he was ready for it, his voice sounded strained on the tape.

“On his arms. On his legs. On his buttocks. Sometimes there were bite marks. I mentioned this to Doctor Green but he told me Daniel had done it to himself, that he wanted to incriminate his stepbrother, that he had an almost pathological need to be perceived as a victim.”

O'Neill gritted his teeth. The man he knew had an almost pathological need not to be perceived as a victim, even when he very obviously was one, he doubted he had really changed so much since he was a teenager.

Bratac continued quietly: “I did not understand how someone could bite his own neck. Do you?”

“No. I don’t understand that either.”

“You have seen Daniel recently?”

“Yes. I saw him this morning.”

“How is he?”

“A lot better since we got him away from his bastard stepbrother.” A moment’s awkward silence before he muttered: “I didn’t say that.”

“Nor did I hear it.” That was the point when Bratac had got why he was really there. His gaze had been more compassionate then. “You don’t wish to prove his guilt, do you? But rather his innocence?”

He couldn’t answer that without incriminating himself. “The bruises on his arms? Were they the kind fingers left or needles?”

“Both. On different occasions.”

“And the bruises in…other places?”

“The kind one would associate with sexual intercourse.”

“Consensual?”

“Perhaps.” Bratac had shrugged then. “But he was fifteen years old and deemed to be mentally unfit to leave the hospital. How much is consent worth in such a case?”

“So you told his grandfather?”

“Yes.” Bratac sounded sorrowful even on the tape. “I knew of his work. I admired him greatly. It seemed to me that his mental incapacity was of no more significance than was Newton’s obsession with alchemy. It invalidated nothing, not Newton’s determination that the Earth is an oblate spheroid rather than a perfect sphere, or his realization that all things possess a gravitational mass, that we are all exerting a force upon one another and therefore all connected. In the same way it did not affect my opinion that Nicholas Ballard was one of the greatest archaeologists that ever lived and his work on the Mayan civilization incomparable in its depth and insight.”

O'Neill had felt little trickles of sadness run through him then. “If you don’t mind me saying so, sir, you seem very well read for a hospital orderly.”

“I was a teacher once. But I lost my way.”

“How did you ‘lose your way’?”

“I lost my child. My daughter. She was thirteen and a man killed her. The police of my town knew me well and they were kind to me. They told me the name of the man they suspected and the evidence they had against him. I was not certain it would be sufficient for a conviction. I took the law into my own hands.”

“Was he guilty?” O'Neill’s voice was roughened with anger on the tape.

“Yes. But what difference does that make? When a man kills another, he becomes a murderer. That is what I am now. That is what I will always be. Some things cannot be undone.”

“Did you go to prison?”

“Yes. I pleaded guilty. I felt that much I owed to the justice of my land. Had I not done so I would never have been convicted. No one wished me to pay for my crime. But a man who takes the life of another lives with it always.”

“Only a man with a conscience.”

“What manner of man has no conscience?”

O'Neill thought of all the murderers whose eyes he’d looked into over the years. “More than you’d think.”

“Tony is not one of those men. In his eyes I read always guilt and self-hatred. Were I a man of God instead of a man of reason, I would have commended him to his priest. I think he had a great wish to confess. He was barely a man himself. I think salvation was still possible for him at that time.”

O'Neill could hear his own sigh on the tape. “I don’t think it is now.”

“What of Daniel?”

The conversation sounded nothing like an interrogation between detective and witness, it sounded more like a philosophical debate, pupil to teacher, young monk to aged abbot.

O'Neill was surprised by the vehemence of his own voice. “Daniel is going to be saved.”

***

Daniel rubbed his eyes and looked back at the glyphs. Some part of his mind recognized them but no words were coming to his mouth, no sound associated with them, something he had seen many times but never felt the need to articulate. Perhaps McKay was correct, after all, and they were numbers. Except they didn’t feel like numbers. Numbers didn’t excite him, not in the way they excited McKay. 

He had investigated the earliest form of written language for every civilization that had influenced Ancient Egyptian or interacted with it culturally in any way and come up a complete blank. In his sleep-deprived and caffeine-overdosed state Daniel was starting to think the Stargate glyphs represented something different to each person who looked at them. Some mythological metaphor. To the mathematician they looked like numbers, the possible means to unravel some insoluble theory. To the frustrated astronaut, they represented the planets she would never reach. And to him… What did they represent to him? Escape from the life he hated living. A gateway to another world and another way of being. They couldn’t be all of those things so what were they? And how could he separate them from his own wishes and desires, not to mention the lingering contamination of McKay and Carter’s wishes and desires, to work out what they really were?

He couldn’t get to that pure state of observation he’d felt when first looking at them. He’d been so close to knowing what they were back then. Since then everything had been blurred by the stress of knowing that if he failed then Hammond would retire, even though he sensed the man had no wish for retirement yet, Carter would go back to the Pentagon and never know what the ‘gate could have been. McKay would disappear back into his number crunching, perhaps not even on the same project as Carter. Even Harriman who sat over the computer consoles and ran a hundred tests a day in case the project ever actually began would presumably be sent elsewhere. All because Daniel had failed them. The one trick he’d always been able to do from his earliest memories, the ability to look at a written language and hear the way it ought to sound in his mind, to see these new lines etched into rock or papyrus, chiseled or inked squiggles, change from meaningless to meaningful, just because those old words still wanted to be heard and in Daniel had found a conduit to find their voice again. Had his parents paid with their lives for this? Had his precarious sanity been part of the bargain? And what use was such a sacrifice if now when it could have actually done some good for other living breathing human beings who had been kind to him if his gift now failed him?

Or was it something else? He looked at the telephone. It would ring again soon. He would wish that it was O'Neill but it would be Tony. All that baffled rage, and hurt, and fear. Perhaps it had always been Daniel’s fault. If he’d just told an adult back at the beginning then Tony would have been stopped before it was too much of a crime. Sometimes he looked into Tony’s eyes and almost saw his conscience burning, a flame behind his eyes. There were days when he knew he was saner than Tony could ever be, saner than O'Neill maybe was right now with that gunshot still echoing through his dreams every time he dared to close his eyes, and other days when he remembered the blurred confusion of too many years when qualified psychiatrists had looked at his charts and shaken their heads. Perhaps the human race was naturally crazy? Perhaps life was a constant struggle to overcome incipient insanity?

“Daniel…?”

He looked up to see Captain Carter in the doorway, holding a mug of coffee. She’d asked him to call her ‘Sam’, but it was still an effort to remember. She and McKay kept bringing him coffee as an excuse to find out if he’d made any progress. Did they really think he’d keep it to himself if he had? She brought him decaf, which was probably very responsible of her, although a little frustrating. He suspected she was an older sister, the one who had always been given the task of looking after a younger sibling, whose fault it would be if any harm came to him or her.

“Hey, Sam.”

As he looked up at her, he suddenly realized what the problem was. Not the Stargate or its glyphs, just that his mind was too cluttered with other thoughts for him to reach that state of pure communion with the problem that was needed. Too much unfinished business, too much deceit. He’d left them behind, in every way, he just hadn’t the courage to look them in the eye and tell them so. Make that hadn’t had the courage to look Tony in the eye. He needed to find some closure with his old life before he could truly embrace the new. 

“How are you doing?” She forced a smile, although her gaze went to the notepad in front of him with something approaching desperation.

“I need to go back to Chicago.”

“What?” She looked aghast.

“Just something I have to finish off. I think I could solve this if only I…” Perhaps what he really needed to do was grant Tony absolution. Look him in the eye and tell him he didn’t blame him, that it didn’t truly matter any more. It was Nick’s death that had shattered him, not those furtive fumbles under the covers. Since then he’d found the proof of his own worthlessness in the whiteness of the padded cell to which his insanity had ushered him. He saw it reflected every day in the pills on his nightstand, in the things that crawled up the walls, the streaking colors, and melting clocks. So, what did it matter what Tony did to the person he had become? O'Neill was getting righteously indignant on behalf of someone who couldn’t be trusted to have laces in his shoes. Someone who had killed a faithful pet who’d loved and trusted him. Someone whose response to stress was to climb into a corner and cry. Tony had done no more than take him at his own evaluation and Daniel had been as complicit in that assessment as his stepbrother. 

He looked around the room, bare gray-walled sanctuary, like a friar’s cell, dedicated to the glory of a higher cause but very much his own. He had shed his old life like a snake its skin and moved here not just physically but mentally too. The only thing in his old life to which he felt any sense of connection was his books and the artifacts his parents had left him. And O'Neill, of course. But O'Neill was part of this life, too. At least he hoped he was.

Daniel shrugged. “I’ve left and I haven’t told them. I need to tell them. Maybe then I can…” 

They both looked at the glyphs in silence. Not a language, although his parents perhaps had died to give him the gift of tongues. Not numbers, although in them McKay had hoped to find the proof he could be a virtuoso after all. Not planets, although Carter dreamed of walking on the surface of distant worlds. Something too obvious for them to see. So obvious it had blinded them, as if they had gazed into the sun for too long. 

“I’ll come with you.”

He hadn’t realized until she said it that those were the words he had been hoping to hear. “You will?” He sounded pathetically pleased. He winced. “I mean…you don’t have to…” But he wanted her to.

“Of course I’ll come with you.” Carter forced a smile. “You’re a security risk. You can’t be left unsupervised.” The anxiety in her eyes as she looked at him betrayed an entirely different motive.

He almost said, as he’d said to O'Neill, _I’m not afraid of him_. But it would have been a lie. At the thought of the moment of confrontation, of packing a suitcase and saying that final ‘goodbye’ he felt a chill pass through him as if someone had just walked over his grave. 

She put a hand on his shoulder, exactly as if she knew. “It’s no trouble, Daniel. Maybe we both need a day away from this place, and you could probably do with your books.”

There were no real words for how grateful he was. He had to stop himself from falling in love with this place and these people as abjectly as he’d already fallen in love with O'Neill. An ex-government assassin and a secret military project, and both seemed to have captured his heart. What did that say about his morality? Had he been crazy for so long he couldn’t hold onto any essential part of himself? He said, “Thank you,” softly and her hand on his shoulder tightened gently. He reached up and laced his fingers through hers and they laid their heads against one another, gazing sadly at the glyphs one last time, to further imprint them on their minds.

***


	2. Chapter 2

##### TWO

O'Neill hoped Kawalsky was doing this for Sha’re’s sake. And perhaps for Farouk’s. Not to mention that grief-dazed fiancé of the dead Novakovitch who, for want of a better suspect, was moving rapidly towards a trial. 

In his twenties, O'Neill had done some experimentation. He’d been fortunate enough to be born before the days of AIDS, and that had made fooling around with drugs and partners less of the Russian roulette experience it would have been these days. He felt a little sorry for the young and hormonal these days, no doubt their libidos and curiosity were as active as his own had been, but the risk associated with exploring both was so much higher these days. He’d always been more proud than ashamed of his experiences in his late teens and early twenties. Not that he’d bragged…okay, maybe he had. Under the guise of ‘honesty’ with friends and later partners he had mentioned the notches on his bedposts, the illegal substances that had once percolated through his veins. There was also the pleasure of upsetting people’s assumptions. He was the archetypal alpha male, after all, and people knowing him as man on the fast track to forty knew him only as married, monogamous, heterosexual, all states of mind and body that would have seemed unthinkable to him at the age of twenty-two. He liked to mindfuck passing homophobes – of which there had been rather too many in both his professions – letting them chew on the unwelcome news that if they wanted to get into that ‘them and us’ mentality then they were going to have to place beer-drinking good ol’ Minnesota boy O'Neill in the ‘them’ category. 

So Kawalsky knew his susceptibilities didn’t flow only in one direction. And then there was Daniel, who despite the broad shoulders and generous breadth of chest, had something about him that very obviously appealed to both genders. He was the kind of guy other guys would look at in a bar and mentally place as someone they wouldn’t mind doing if they were stuck on a desert island with him. The kind of guy they got a vague buzz from being around that they never properly identified as sexual, but which nevertheless stirred them in places that weren’t too far away from their groins. You didn’t have to be bisexual to look at Daniel Jackson and notice that he was a little on the pretty side. He guessed Kawalsky was certainly savvy and secure enough in his orientation to take one look at Daniel and know he was probably going to appeal to a guy who found other men desirable. O'Neill hadn’t exactly done a lot to dissuade him of that assumption either.

And Kawalsky was a good friend. The kind of friend who didn’t say a lot but was there when you needed him. O'Neill had been aware of him silently willing O'Neill to hold his marriage together in the months before it finally irrevocably fell apart, but although he suspected Kawalsky’s sympathy had been with Sara, the man had never uttered a word of reproach. Or advice. It occurred to him that Daniel would probably have done both. Daniel would probably have demanded to know why O'Neill wasn’t talking to his wife when they had both suffered the same loss. He would have played marriage guidance counselor until O'Neill had wanted to smother him with a pillow. He would have been as persistent as rain on a cracked tile but he might even have succeeded in stopping Sara deciding that enough was enough. 

O'Neill wondered where this conviction came from that he knew Daniel so well. That he could drop him into a hypothetical situation and immediately know how he’d react. They’d spent a week together buried in the bowels of Cheyenne Mountain and for most of that time Daniel had been wandering around with his nose buried in a pile of weird symbols that seemed to have the ability to turn the mind of anyone who looked at them to mush. Even O'Neill had found himself trying to figure them out. There was certainly something about that ring Daniel insisted on calling a ‘gate’. It was probably the most impressive thing he’d ever seen, and that included the Grand Canyon. Like some beauty of nature it was so massively impassive, so indifferent to them all. Except this hadn’t just occurred, water on granite for millennia. It had been built at a time when the pyramids were being erected, a time, according to Daniel, far earlier than previously suspected by Egyptologists. A lot of what the guy said went straight over O'Neill’s head, yet it didn’t make him feel inadequate in the way Carter and McKay’s incomprehensible babbling did. He would find himself watching Daniel talking about something, hands waving all over the place, eyes alight with enthusiasm, and feel a silly smile taking up permanent resident on his face. The way Daniel lit up when something captured his interest was really beautiful to behold. No wonder Sarah Gardner had sent him those stolen documents. He realized now she hadn’t cared whether he solved them or not, she just wanted him to remember how it felt to be excited about an idea again, to have a puzzle to solve. They had been the file in the cake she’d smuggled into the prisoner to see if he could find his way back to freedom.

He’d been surprised by how sweet Daniel was when you spent a little time with him. When he wasn’t being backed into a corner by bullying stepbrothers or officious cops, he was tactful around other people, careful of their feelings. It was kind of cute to watch because his overriding curiosity was always at war with his good manners. When another part of some possibly relevant wall of hieroglyphs was given to him he’d practically snatch them out of the hand of whoever was proffering them and be halfway across the room before he remembered his manners and gave them a little apologetic wince and ‘thank you’ that was so endearing O'Neill would find himself openly doing the doting thing. 

He kept vacillating between treating Daniel as parentally as if the guy was some modern day Oliver Twist he’d rescued from the workhouse and then finding his hormones got restless when they were in close proximity. It was difficult to tell if Daniel’s particular form of hero worship involved just sticking O'Neill on a pedestal then walking around it admiringly or if the guy actually had the sweaty naked kind of thoughts about him. It wasn’t as if Daniel didn’t know what getting sweaty and naked with a guy entailed. Whether he knew it was possible to choose your partner or just hang around passively waiting for them to select you was an entirely different matter. Despite knowing O'Neill was about to be divorced, Daniel had done absolutely nothing about moving them towards the bedroom. He didn’t seem to have any idea how seducing someone else worked, perhaps because in his experience, rather as with buses, if you stood still for long enough a seducer would turn up to take you to bed sooner or later. So, Daniel’s contribution to their relationship moving from cop and witness towards significant others, had been to sigh a little when in the same room as O'Neill and look at him wistfully when he imagined O'Neill’s attention was otherwise diverted. Frankly, a schoolgirl could have done a more sophisticated job of progressing the situation. Which was unfortunate, because no way in hell was O'Neill putting any moves on someone who, as well as being a possible suspect, not to mention a victim of persistent abuse, didn’t seem to have grasped what ‘consent’ actually was.

And, damnit, all roads obviously led to Daniel right now, because he’d been thinking about Kawalsky, not the world’s most distracting geek. Kawalsky was working his ass off on this case. He’d interviewed just about everyone Sha’re had ever met and most of Novakovitch’s relatives as well, and had covered for O'Neill at every opportunity. He owed the man big time and as soon as this case was over he was going to find a way to make it up to him.

Having scheduled a meeting with the Jackson family solicitor while in the Airport at Colorado, O'Neill had planned his questions on the two hour flight, then driven straight to their offices as soon as he touched down in Chicago. Now he was trying to get his head around everything he’d learned. He had that feeling he got when he was nearly at the end of a case. When all the facts were in his possession, when it was just a matter of putting it together in the right order.

Even before his divorce, he’d never had a lot of time for lawyers and even this particular lawyer having the reassuringly Irish-sounding of name of O’Mack did nothing to overcome his prejudice. O’Mack turned out to be a middle-aged man with pale brows and lashes and a face he seemed to have trained to conceal emotion. There was none of the professional unctuousness O'Neill had been half expecting. His greeting to O'Neill was polite but muted as if he was withholding judgment and until judgment was made, refusing to invest too much of himself in this meeting or conversation. His office was a reassuringly cluttered place – box files leading up to the ceiling and books on every available space – someone with whom O'Neill could imagine Daniel getting along fine.

“What can you tell me about his trust fund?”

O’Mack steepled his hands. “About its creation and original conditions, anything you want to know. About its administration now – very little.”

“Why?”

“The management of the main trust was passed over to the other trustees some time ago.”

“How is that possible?”

“Doctor Ballard created an inter vivos or living trust for his grandson, with Doctor Jackson the main beneficiary. By that I mean he created a trust fund for Doctor Jackson while he, Doctor Ballard, was still alive, which left the bulk of his estate in trust for his grandson.”

“Did he name himself as the main trustee?”

O’Mack shook his head. “He was advised against it, not only the grounds of his mental health but because of the nature of the trust fund he wished created. When an irrevocable living trust is set up, ownership of the assets is turned over to the trustee. The trust becomes, for tax purposes, a separate entity, and the assets cannot be removed, nor can changes be made by the grantor. This type of trust is often used by individuals with large estates to reduce estate taxes and avoid probate. However, if the grantor names himself or herself as trustee or is entitled to trust income, the tax benefits would generally be lost. Therefore, Doctor Ballard named myself and two others as trustees.”

O'Neill nodded. “Okay, can you explain that to me? Tell me what your role is as a trustee?”

“The person who manages a trust has a legal duty to manage the trust's assets in the best interests of the beneficiary or beneficiaries. This might include managing assets, investing funds or paying income to the beneficiary. How much a trustee is required to do and how much access he or she has to the funds is specified in the trust. A simple or mandatory trust requires the trustee to distribute income to the beneficiary. A complex or discretionary trust may afford the trustee discretion over the principal and income to be distributed. That was the case with the trust for Doctor Jackson. There were many provisions, some of them reasonable, some of them somewhat eccentric, designed to protect Doctor Jackson’s assets, given his history of mental illness, without inconveniencing him in his professional life.”

O'Neill grimaced. “Meaning…what, exactly?”

O’Mack sighed. “Normally one might expect the trust to be passed over to Doctor Jackson at the age of twenty-one. However, it was deemed more sensible for him to have access only to the interest from the estate until he was thirty. A separate trust had been set up for Doctor Ballard, from which he could draw an income, which effectively paid his living expenses, that trust passing to Doctor Jackson upon Doctor Ballard’s death. As things fell out, that trust became the property of Doctor Jackson at a time when he was…”

“In a psychiatric hospital?” O'Neill felt the muscle in his jaw clench.

O’Mack nodded. “Yes. I retained control of that trust and still administer it today. If the investments continue at their present level of losses and gains, it should bring in Doctor Jackson an income of perhaps a hundred thousand a year, However, Doctor Jackson had already accessed the larger trust, as he was legally perfectly able to do because of the provisions of the trust.”

“What provisions?” He was already wishing Kawalsky had gotten this interview and he’d got to talk to Gardner instead. He would have much preferred a conversation with someone who’d used to sleep with Daniel and who evidently still had feelings for him. Perhaps that was why Kawalsky had chosen her to interview, perhaps he thought O'Neill would find talking to one of Daniel Jackson’s blasts from the past would prove much too interesting to O'Neill.

“Doctor Ballard had given specific instructions when the trust was set up that if his grandson had special need of the money – such as to fund an archaeological excavation – it should be released to him.”

 _It’s a ‘dig’. Not an ‘archaeological excavation’._ Realizing he was allowing himself to be distracted, O'Neill frowned in concentration. “And Daniel – Doctor Jackson asked for funds to be released to him?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Five years ago. It was to fund archaeological research. Management of the trust fund was passed over to the other trustee and they released funds to Doctor Jackson as per his request.”

“What? Just like that?” O'Neill looked at him in disbelief.

“Not exactly. I certainly advised against it. Part of the Ballard trust had been invested in the Japanese stock market, which collapsed in 1990…”

“But even so I don’t suppose you were having to hunt for spare nickels down the back of the couch?”

O’Mack gave him a look of disapproval. “The sum Doctor Ballard wanted to make available to his grandson would significantly reduce the capital left in the trust fund and would affect his annual income. As Doctor Jackson was a very young man and the stock market not very stable, I was concerned that it might impact negatively upon his future comfort. A few unfortunate marriages, some unwise investments, and Doctor Jackson could have found himself…”

“Having to struggle by on less than a million a year?”

“Detective O'Neill, my firm has a reputation to maintain. When we are asked to administer a trust we try to do so to the benefit of our client. When the beneficiary is an orphan, with his only living relative a grandfather of advanced years, failing health and mental instability, and when the beneficiary has himself already spent a year in a psychiatric hospital after being wrongly diagnosed as suffering from schizophrenia…”

O'Neill got it then, like a shaft of light through the clouds, and realized he had been looking at this all the wrong way, so stuffed full of stories of absconding accountants and crooked lawyers that he had been assuming O’Mack had been acting in his own best interests, not Daniel’s. “You’d met him. You’d met Daniel.”

A blink of surprise and then a slow nod. “Yes. On a couple of occasions. I felt that it was far better if Doctor Jackson was not given access to the bulk of his trust until he had…”

“Learned how to stand up to Tony Ballard-Green?” O'Neill enquired quietly.

O’Mack was careful not to meet his eye. “I felt that my first duty was to ensure that the trust was an asset to its beneficiary and not an inconvenience or…”

Danger, O'Neill thought. He wants to say ‘danger’. 

O’Mack took a deep breath. “I felt my first obligation was to ensure that Doctor Jackson had a reasonable income throughout his life which would enable him to pursue his academic studies without interruption or undue…stress. I also felt the sum of money being requested for permission to excavate the site and to maintain the archaeological excavation for the time period specified was excessive. I saw no reason why he should have to fund the excavation for a ten year period out of own pocket. Nor did I see why the expenses for each year could not be paid on an annual basis. I also thought it more appropriate if he had the support of the university and some official sanction for the excavation, which official funding might have supplied.”

“You thought he was being fleeced?”

O’Mack sighed. “I certainly suspected no effort was being made to raise funds from other quarters because of Doctor Jackson’s financial situation. Doctor Ballard didn’t see it that way. As someone who felt himself often thwarted by the lack of imagination of his fellow academics he saw my objections in the same light. Doctor Green, however, felt that it would be healthy for Doctor Jackson to immerse himself in his work and offered no objection to the money from the trust being made available to him immediately. I was released from my obligations as a trustee and the money was, I believe given to Doctor Jackson as per his request.”

The idiot! “So, Daniel was given all the money?”

“The sum he requested, although considerable, should have left a sum of perhaps thirty million dollars in the trust fund.”

“Is there that much left now?”

“I have no idea. We administer some residual comparatively minor investments for various other beneficiaries and for Doctor Jackson, but the main bulk of Doctor Ballard’s estate is no longer in our hands.”

O'Neill grimaced. “So, you don’t know how much is left in his trust fund and you have no way of finding out?”

“Correct.”

“Can you tell me who the trustees are who are now administering it?” Even as he asked the question he felt a weary sense of inevitability.

“Doctor Melvin Green and his sister Zinnia Ballard-Green were named as Doctor Jackson’s guardians, trustees, and executors to the Ballard estate when Doctor Jackson was still a teenager.”

He almost groaned aloud. And all they’d needed to access the money was for Daniel to want to go on a dig for which there wasn’t sufficient funding – and for what dig was there ever sufficient funding? “You wouldn’t happen to know when Doctor Green purchased White Towers and set up his clinic there, would you?”

O’Mack’s gaze flickered but he kept his composure admirably. “I’m afraid that falls outside the jurisdiction of this office, Detective O'Neill.”

“Shouldn’t something have happened when Dan – Doctor Jackson reached his thirtieth birthday? Shouldn’t there have been some big legal event?”

For the first time the professional façade slipped. “I have endeavored to contact Doctor Jackson on a number of occasions both before and since he reached thirty to…” A hesitation as he groped for the right words.

Check the grasping bastards gave him what’s left of his money.

“…ensure that there were no legal questions I could help him with arising from his coming into sole possession of the Ballard estate. However, I have been unable to contact him.”

“Why?” O'Neill leaned forward, anger thrumming through him because everyone had known an injustice was happening right under their noses and no one seemed to have done anything about it, no one except a convicted murderer who had got himself fired alerting Nicholas Ballard to the way his grandson was being treated.

O’Mack sighed and spread his fingers on the desk like a concert pianist before he began to play, a shrug to which he was too professional to give way diverted to those expressive digits. “He has no telephone in his room and when I call I’m informed that he is unable to come to the phone at that time. The letters I have sent him have not been answered and I have no specific reason for calling upon him in person.”

“If you’re still the family lawyer surely you can make something up?”

O’Mack darted him a glance then. “I wouldn’t want to be responsible for precipitating some crisis.” A fractional pause then infinitesimal retreat. “Doctor Jackson’s health…”

O'Neill was still cold with comprehension. Time and again husbands murdered their wives because a divorce was looming and they didn’t want to take the financial hit that it would bring. If Daniel’s money had been embezzled by his relatives-by-marriage, a visit from a lawyer might drive them to take action, and what action could be taken to avert such a threat except to replace the money or, if that were impossible, make it legally theirs. Feeling as if ants were walking over his skin, he said quietly, “I don’t suppose Doctor Jackson has made a will, has he?”

“Yes. He has.” O’Mack looked at O'Neill with more respect. They had been walking around one another carefully for a while but now they were starting to communicate, one to one, both of them trusting the other at last and his motives. “It was typewritten on a standard will form, properly witnessed and dated, and legally correct. It was mailed to me seven months ago. I have been unable to contact him to discuss it since then. I had been hoping to do so before his thirtieth birthday, but as I said, he has not been available to take my call.”

“May I ask to whom he leaves all his money?” The ants were walking up and down his spine, tiny frozen feet a chill upon his skin.

“To his step-uncle, Anthony Ballard Green.”

O'Neill heard the clicking sound of something falling into place. He didn’t know what yet exactly. He just knew this was the answer. The question still eluded him, as did the exact details, but the answer was definitely Tony being the main beneficiary of Daniel Jackson’s typewritten will. From what felt like a long way off he heard his own voice saying with surprising calm, “I think you were wise not to make that housecall, Mister O’Mack. Could I possibly have a copy of that will…?”

 

It was as he walked through door of his rented apartment that O'Neill realized how much he hated it, how much he missed his house, the life lost to him along with his son. He’d thought he knew that he and Sara were finished, but it still hit like a physical blow as he walked through the door and realized this wasn’t his home, could never be his home, and that he missed his wife and his child and the life he’d used to know so much it made his eyes sting. As he dropped his suitcase on the floor and looked around at the paintings he hadn’t hung, the boxes he’d never unpacked, it struck him with renewed force how much he was just camping here. That he not only wasn’t truly living here but had no intention of ever living here. This was the equivalent of a bus shelter on the way to another destination. You rested your suitcase on its floor for a while but it was never more than a stopping place along the way. 

He hoped that realizing he was still operating in an emotional limbo was a step forward at least. Perhaps now he really could make the clean break he thought he’d been making when he moved into this deliberately mean-spirited apartment he currently refused to call ‘home’. He didn’t know how much this moment of revelation had to do with Daniel and how much just the act of leaving and returning, but for the first time he knew in a way he’d never quite known before that he not only had been subconsciously waiting for Sara to come and find him, but that it wasn’t going to happen. She had been through the most heart-shattering experience of her life and the person who should have helped her through it had retreated into his own private darkness and locked the door to keep her out. There were times in everyone’s life when they had to work out what relationships were a force for good in their lives and which a force for bad, and, difficult though it was for him to accept it, he guessed Sara really was better off without him. Coming to terms with the loss of her son was hard enough without his silent hostility to deal with as well. So she wouldn’t be looking for him and if he asked her to take him back it would be without trust. Perhaps she still loved him – he certainly still loved her – but something irretrievable had broken between them. She had gotten the worst of him for too many years, Black Ops guilt and self-hatred culminating in the dark cloud of self-loathing that had enveloped him over the death of their son. Somewhere over the years she had been robbed of the man she married, the guy who was funny and smart and didn’t have too many chips on his shoulder, who was sexy and romantic and good in bed. In exchange she’d gotten the silent, screwed up, permanently angry, utterly uncommunicative miserable bastard who had so signally failed to be there for her through the darkest period of her life. Christ, if Sara had been his sister instead of his wife, he wouldn’t have wanted her to take him back. 

It was a shock to look around his apartment and to realize it was deliberately undecorated as a set in the play that had never happened. This was supposed to be the place where she came and found him and realized he couldn’t manage without her and she ought to take him back to the comfort of her bosom. Except, Sara had shown sense enough never to play her designated part and that left him a sad bastard with an unpacked suitcase in an apartment he hated. There were degrees of over, from lover’s tiffs between teenage Romeo and Juliets to the irrevocable now that he had reached, and this was as over as it got. He was free. He could drown his freedom in self-pity and alcohol, in too many cigarettes and not enough words. Or he could get off his miserable ass and go and make a new life for himself. 

What was surprising him was the way his old life, the one he now felt the need to shed, seemed to be as much about the police force and Chicago as it did about Sara. Perhaps it was crazy, but he didn’t feel he could move on as long as he stayed in this state. In Colorado he’d felt himself gradually morphing into a person he had at first barely recognized until he realized he was becoming the man he’d used to be. He was becoming the grown up version of the guy who had first gone into the Air Force, cynical and mouthy but with a kind of idealism as well. There was something about Hammond that made him want to believe in the machinery again, in ways it could be made to be a force for good, and something about Daniel that made him want to believe that there really was good in the human race. 

Because that was another unavoidable truth. That he was a different guy when he was with Daniel. More himself than he had been in years. People who had known him for the past decade probably wouldn’t even recognize him, but his younger brother would. It was one of the maddening things about Ben that when he looked at Detective Jack O'Neill, Homicide Division, just as when he had looked at Colonel Jack O'Neill, Special Ops, he still saw the older brother who’d put newts down his neck one day and beaten the crap out that older boy who’d bullied him in the playground the next. He could never get any damned respect for his medals and uniforms from Ben. He never got anything except the unconditional love you gave to a flawed and slightly crazy older brother who’d carried you home when you skinned your knees then thrown your homework down the well, just because. 

That was another reason why he detested Tony Ballard Green because he knew what being an older brother was about, and when your younger brother climbed into your bed because he was cold or had a nightmare or felt unwell, what you didn’t do was what Tony had done to Daniel. You had obligations as an older brother and you took them seriously. And sometimes you were a bastard, yes. Sometimes you even made them cry but then you built them a go-kart to make amends, on some level you were always there for them, even on the days when you were acting like a jerk on the surface. That was what being an older brother entailed, and although the minor details were open to negotiation, the sub-clauses and conditions of the fraternal contract open to different interpretations, on some fundamental level the basics of what being a brother entailed just weren’t negotiable. 

Maybe that was why he felt he had to be so many different things to Daniel – because there were so many interpersonal relationships the guy had missed out on: father, brother, and partner, not to mention best friend. O'Neill didn’t know which role he should be replacing first. Maybe, as what Daniel needed was all of the above, he should check every box and get on with being everything the guy had ever missed out and ever needed. Yeah right. And with his other hand he’d work on that World Peace thing.

When he turned his head, the photocopy of the will was still lying on the couch next to him, and every time he looked at it his palms started to sweat. For a smart guy Daniel was terrifyingly dumb at times. Three PhDs and it didn’t occur to him that willing every penny of his thirty million over to his abusive stepbrother wasn’t the best idea he’d ever had? 

His brain was hurting from too much thinking and it was almost a relief when Kawalsky called to tell him to meet him in Doc Fraiser’s office. Another breakthrough apparently. This case was full of breakthroughs. They had so much information they could barely move for it, but what they didn’t have was any coherent pattern emerging of what all this information actually meant.

He drove across town with the piece of photocopied paper fluttering on the seat beside him, still going over the conditions of the will in his mind. Everything to Tony Ballard-Green. Nothing to Zinnia. Nothing to Melvin. Nothing to Sarah Gardner or anyone else. The lack of minor bequests was the only thing about it that struck him as strange. He didn’t think it at all out of character of the mixed up martyred walking contradiction that was Daniel Jackson that he would give all his money to the person who had abused him as some kind of absolution for that person’s sins. For all he knew, Daniel had found a way to make it his fault, and this was his way of making it up to Tony. 

He was still a little dazed as he wandered into Fraiser’s office, mind still turning over the ramifications of what O’Mack had told him, his realization that this was a life he had to leave behind if he ever wanted to find himself again. His smile for Kawalsky froze on his face at the look in the man’s eyes. For one frozen second he thought Kawalsky had uncovered the proof that Daniel was a murderer and in that instant he found himself trying to think of a way he could cover it up. Then the moment passed, sanity reasserted itself and he said breathlessly, “What?”

Kawalsky nodded to Fraiser. “Doc’s been analyzing those pills you took from Jackson. It’s not good news.”

Looking between them, O'Neill said shortly, “What do you mean?”

Kawalsky said, “Tell him what you told me, Doc.”

Fraiser’s glance at him was uncomfortably shrewd. He’d often suspected that women, like cats, had the ability to read minds. It was just one of the reasons why he preferred dogs to cats. He got enough crap from criminals, when he went home he thought a little uncritical adoration from a household pet went a lot further than a lofty sniff of disapproval.

Fraiser had the pills on a napkin on a specimen tray and now pointed to one of them. “The pills you took from Doctor Jackson were mostly anti-depressants and anti-hallucinogenics. There are several different kinds of anti-depressants. The oldest kind are Tricyclic antidepressants like amitriptyline. They’re effective but they carry a long list of side-effects and you can use them to commit suicide. Then there are MAO-Inhibitors – Monoamine oxidase inhibitors, like Nardil. They work by blocking an enzyme called monoamine oxidase. Some of the messenger molecules or neurotransmitters of the brain, such as serotonin and norepinephrine, are monoamines, and if you turn off this enzyme, the result is that more of these molecules accumulate. The result is therefore essentially the same effect as using an SSRI or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor like fluoxetine hydrochloride.”

“Prozac.” O'Neill found his fingers curled involuntarily into a fist.

Fraiser said gently, “I know it didn’t work for you, O'Neill, but it has worked for a lot of other people.” She turned back to Kawalsky. “The SSRIs function much the way as do other antidepressants in that they change the chemical concentration of neurotransmitters within the brain, but they’re more selective than MAOs and they don’t cause the same build up of Tyramine and its consequence blood pressure problems.”

“So, which anti-depressant is Daniel on?” O'Neill pressed. Seeing their look of surprise he amended quickly, “Doctor Jackson, I mean.”

“Well, that’s the problem.” Doctor Fraiser turned the specimen tray around. “Patients are advised never to take MAO inhibitors and fluoxetine at the same time because of Serotonin Syndrome. If a patient is put on Prozac and it doesn’t work and they need to switch to MAO inhibitors medication they have to have a five-week gap between taking the two. If they try MAO inhibitors first and they don’t work they have to leave a two-week gap before taking Prozac. There’s not just a physiological risk in combining these two, there is also the danger that they will have an adverse psychological affect. Almost any drug that cures a problem can also accelerate it and this is certainly true of MAO and SSRI medication. When two drugs that work in different ways to achieve the same goal are combined they can cause such an accelerated effect as to induce hallucinations and psychosis in someone who was formerly only depressed.” Fraiser held up a green and white pill. “This is Prozac, an SSRI anti-depressant.” The next pill. “This is Nardil or Phenelzine, a MAO inhibitor. You can buy both of these over the Internet easily.” A third pill. “This is Haldol or Haloperidol, an anti-psychotic, which, in theory anyway, would have to be prescribed. None of these drugs should be taken with alcohol, or with each other, and personally I would need a patient to be a lot sicker than Doctor Jackson appears to be before I would be prescribing something for him that could cause tardive dyskinesia. And then there’s this…” She held up one of the green pills. “This is dimethyltryptamine or DMT, an endogenous hallucinogen.”

“Businessman’s LSD.” O'Neill took it from her and examined it before glancing at Kawalsky who nodded grimly. 

“Otherwise known as 45 minute psychosis.”

Fraiser picked her words carefully. “It’s possible that Doctor Jackson could be a victim of the worst case of medical incompetence ever. If he was suffering from depression in his early teens…”

“Which, given the fact his parents were dead, his only living relative had been admitted to a psychiatric hospital, and he was being sexually abused by his step-brother is a real possibility…” O'Neill knew he really needed to take some anger management classes round about now, because the urge to put his fist through a window was becoming overwhelming.

Fraiser continued evenly: “He could have been put on anti-depressants that accelerated his symptoms and the doctor treating him may have misdiagnosed his increased anxiety as evidence that his dosage needed to be increased and that could have accelerated his symptoms from depression to psychosis. Sixteen years ago we didn’t understand the way anti-depressants work as well as we do now. Prozac didn’t hit the market until 1988. If it had been available ten years earlier Doctor Jackson might have been helped much more quickly.”

Kawalsky reached across and picked up the pills. “Doctor, in your opinion, is it likely that any doctor would deliberately prescribe this combination of pills for one patient concurrently?”

“No.” Janet Fraiser shook her dark head. “Never at the same time. The possible consequences of prescribing Nardil and Prozac are known by every qualified medical practitioner. This situation could come about if Doctor Jackson was being seen by a number of different doctors, who were unaware of the other medication he was on, or if he was supplementing his prescription medication with non-prescription medication. But, no, no one doctor would deliberately prescribe this particular combination of drugs.”

O'Neill took the tablets from Kawalsky and tightened his fist around them. “Supposing you wanted to take someone from depression to full blown psychosis. Could you make a sane person crazy if you gave him enough of the wrong kind of drugs?”

Fraiser nodded. “Put in layman’s terms, even without the dimethyltryptamine, keeping someone more or less permanently on contradictory anti-depressants is not going to do their mental health a whole lot of good. And if you add something as extreme as Halperidol to the mix…” She shrugged.

O'Neill’s brain was ticking over rapidly. “You could establish a history of mental illness for someone pretty quickly that way though, couldn’t you? Once the prescription for anti-depressants was handed out, if the dose was doubled or an adverse reaction was ignored, and then you threw the occasional hallucinogenic into the mix, not just the doctor treating the patient but the patient himself is going to believe he’s got serious problems in the upper story. Then, once he’s established as someone who has psychotic outbreaks he’s into serious drugs to keep him calm, all of which have some kind of side effects, right?”

Fraiser looked as grim as O'Neill felt. “It would be a very cruel thing to do to a sane person.”

“And being sane and being in a psychiatric hospital being treated by people who are so convinced you’re nuts that you come to believe it yourself, not to mention sticking you full of brain-muffling medication, that wouldn’t do too much for your mental health, would it?”

Fraiser met his gaze. “Honestly?”

O'Neill nodded. “I just want to know.”

“Well, then, having examined the medication Doctor Jackson is on I think the real surprise here is that he’s turned out as sane as he is. I think if I had been treated the way he’s been treated I would have had a complete and irreversible breakdown by this point and be currently rocking quietly to myself in a padded cell somewhere.”

***

Carter was very aware that the right person for this job was O'Neill. Daniel trusted her but she couldn’t make him feel safe in the way that O'Neill did. He thought of her as a protector, certainly. She was one of the people who carried a gun and knew how to use it. But she didn’t possess whatever magical properties O'Neill seemed to have in Daniel’s mind. She had been trying to understand their relationship ever since she’d first encountered Daniel in his luxurious and contradictory suite. Like the African masks that so emphatically didn’t go with the dark Victorian colors, she couldn’t find a way to make O'Neill and Daniel gel in her mind. The policeman was taciturn, and as emotionally closed off as one would expect a man to be who was going through a divorce and had recently lost his only child. He was also sarcastic, arrogant, confident, vulnerable, protective, and a lot smarter than he let on. He was also a natural born leader and it was a constant effort for her not to call him ‘Colonel’ – a title he accepted without the blink of an eye from General Hammond yet growled about if anyone else used it, particularly in front of Daniel.

Daniel, by comparison, was brilliant, intuitive, curious, seemed to have the wisdom of some lost race of ancients in the way he could read old tablets and glyphs, was occasionally also childlike, naïve, single-minded, stubborn, sweet, and painfully vulnerable. The only thing they seemed to have in common was that they were both damaged and both on the side of the underdog. The only way she could make sense of their relationship was to think that Daniel had become a substitute in O'Neill’s life for the son he’d lost. That almost suited the way O'Neill responded to Daniel, but it didn’t really get close to the way Daniel responded to O'Neill. Daniel seemed to swing between treating O'Neill like someone to whom difficult concepts had to be explained, and setting him up on a pedestal. O'Neill occasionally seemed to treat Daniel like a new puppy he’d purchased who kept exasperating him by chewing his slippers but was too cute to chastise with any real conviction, and someone so brilliant he could only stand on the sidelines and watch him with parental pride and a certain wistful sense of being excluded. None of which, of course, really dealt with the palpable sexual attraction between them, which just made an already over-complicated relationship between two supposedly heterosexual males even more confusing.

In the end she’d settled for thinking of them like those pairs of subatomic particles which, even when separated by great distances mirrored what their brother particle was doing, the ones that when the particle to which they were connected began to spin would also spin at the exact same instant and exactly the same rate but in the opposite direction. For her it was easier to find the answer to O'Neill and Daniel’s relationship not in amateur psychology but in the basic physics arising from Wolfgang Pauli’s Exclusion Principle: the two of them always contrary but eternally connected.

She had been a little cynical at first that Daniel’s true reason for coming to Chicago had been to follow O'Neill, but he had seemed absolutely sincere in his intentions, and hadn’t mentioned O'Neill once on the flight between Colorado and Chicago. It really did seem to be closure with his family that he needed. She didn’t know if this was a good idea or not but it did seem likely that he wasn’t going to be able to translate those glyphs until he had closed the door on his own life in some formal way. She was desperate enough to support him in almost anything that would help him understand the way the ‘gate worked. Six unsuccessful pleas to the Pentagon to let them just spin the damned glyphs and see what connected later she was ready to try almost anything. The Pentagon were adamant that they had to know what the seventh symbol was because without it whoever went through that ring into the unknown was never going to be able to get home. Carter wondered if that would even matter once you’d done it, stepped through into the unknown and then found yourself walking on another world. Would you care if you were stranded there? The Pentagon was adamant that it couldn’t happen and so they had to find the seventh symbol. And to find the seventh symbol they needed Daniel able to give the problem his full concentration. So, here they were.

Carter looked up at the house without liking. It looked more like a psychiatric hospital than the psychiatric hospital in which Daniel had actually spent that miserable year of his life. White Towers had been built from scratch, new pale stone that looked like something endowed by the Getty Foundation, some tasteful Henry Miller-esque abstract sculptures dotted around the landscaped grounds, easy access for wheelchairs and walkers, stone and glass and pastel colors. This looked like something based on Bedlam. Grim, claustrophobic, starved of natural light and with those unnerving bars on the windows. Presumably Daniel’s room had once been a nursery but it still made his suite look more like a prison cell than a penthouse. Daniel had insisted on going in alone and she hadn’t exactly been sorry to miss what she suspected was going to turn into an ugly family scene. Ultimately though, she didn’t see what his great-aunt and step-uncle could do except send for Doctor Green and try to get him to declare Daniel mentally incompetent. She and Hammond had already discussed that possibility with McKenzie who was adamant that he and the USAF between them could overrule any such judgment made by Melvin Green and get Daniel released to his care. McKenzie was also ready and willing to challenge Melvin Green’s professional competence and motivation if the doctor tried it and had intimated as much to his fellow psychiatrist. Carter had often found McKenzie a bit of a cold fish but she wouldn’t have liked to go up against him, and if it came for a battle over Daniel’s sanity her money was on him over Green every day.

Becoming aware of someone standing nearby, she wheeled around only to find Teal’c watching her from the shrubbery. Even as she surveyed him with professional interest, she was annoyed to find her hormones responding in a way that had nothing to do with any potential threat he represented. She clearly needed to get out more because every time she made eye contact with this guy she found her mind straying towards the physical. “Is Jackson with you?” he demanded.

She nodded. “He just needs to pick up a few personal belongings.”

He came over to where she was standing and she noticed his physique again. He was as unlike Rodney McKay for a man to be. His body brought the word ‘magnificent’ to mind. She had always been interested in men for their minds – or liked to think she was, but she had to admit that in this case there was something happening on the level of basic animal attraction. They looked into one another’s eyes and it was all she could do to stop her gaze straying to his apartment by the garage. It didn’t help that he was looking at her with something approaching concern, brown eyes alight with a genuine warmth. 

“Are you any relation to General Jacob Carter?”

The question came out of nowhere and she stared at him in confusion. “He’s my father. Do you know him?”

He shrugged. “I heard he was a good man.”

As she looked at him the pieces finally fell into place. “You’re not a private detective, are you?”

Another shrug. “I’m one of the good guys. Are you traveling alone with Jackson?”

“Is there some reason why I shouldn’t be?”

“Well, he did used to be in the nut house.”

“His grandfather was murdered!” She couldn’t justify that flare of anger she felt at that dismissive shrug from Teal’c but she had gone from finding him attractive to wanting to shove him through the nearest wall.

“Another reason why I don’t think you should be alone with the guy.”

As she gazed into Teal’c’s eyes she realized he was serious. He really was concerned for her. “You think Daniel’s dangerous.”

“Let’s just say if you people stopped trying to spin that damned ‘gate you might take another look at the writing on those walls.”

There were so many hares started by that sentence she wasn’t sure which one to chase first. She was certain he was military now. Perhaps even Air Force, but not their program, or else some other part of the program. He had the exasperated arrogance of NID but this was not someone who spent his days chasing aliens from Area 51. Special Ops, perhaps. He’d almost told her as much when asking after her father. And then there was the ‘writing on the walls’. Not a man who went in for too many metaphors, she imagined, which suggested he meant it literally.

Closing her eyes, Carter pictured the tomb art in her mind that Gardner and Daniel had photographed and sketched so meticulously. The tomb had been empty, the sarcophagus and mummified corpse presumably stolen by robbers many centuries before. The only clues to its original inhabitant were to be found in the artifacts Daniel and Sarah Gardner had found concealed behind a panel and the strange hieroglyphs on the wall which only Daniel had been able to translate. Apparently the tomb had been that of some unnamed ‘God-King’ who Daniel had kept insisting was pre-dynastic. If Daniel’s translation of the writings on the walls of his tomb was to be believed, he had been born a shepherd boy but a god of the sky had stepped from the Stargate and granted him the gift of divinity and a wife of unparalleled beauty. The ‘gift’ had been described as some kind of vital essence, perhaps like the elixir of life sought after by Arabic alchemists with such diligence in later centuries. He had drunk the essence and his eyes had turned to gold. At once, he was freed from the burdens of age. His strength had been as that of twenty men. All had bowed down before him for the word and grace of the sky god was within him. With his beautiful consort at his side he had conquered the red and the white lands of the Nile, bestowing life and health upon the faithful and bringing death to all those who opposed him. An entire wall had been filled with accounts of those he had crushed and how he had killed his enemies, taking from them everything they possessed. Such was his magnificence that the great Ra himself had been threatened by his power and had descended to earth to bring him low. They had battled together and much blood had been spilled, yet in the end, Ra had snatched from him the essence of his strength and that of his wife and trapped both within magical phials from whence there could be no escape. 

That was the writing Meyer had struggled in vain for so long to translate and which Daniel had understood in a matter of weeks. The artifacts recovered from the dig and ‘confiscated’ by the USAF had included some strange golden arm bracelets and two supposedly magical jars, covered in inscriptions and curses forbidding any to undo them. Someone had obviously disobeyed this injunction because, according to the reports from Gardner and Daniel, one had been broken when they found it and had proven disappointingly devoid of clues. The other had been so tightly sealed they hadn’t been able to find a way to undo it that wouldn’t damage it and it had been packed up, seal still unbroken, to ship back to the States. That jar was still in the possession of the NID, and as it had included no inscription relating to the ‘gate, Carter had never really spared it a thought.

“What do you know that I don’t?” she demanded.

Teal’c drew her away from the front door. “The arm bracelet seems to be a weapon of some kind. It contains the same mineral found in your big stone ring.”

“It’s a ‘Stargate’.” Daniel had given her that, a name for the object to which she had given her heart.

“Whatever.” He shrugged again and she felt her hackles rise. He really was an arrogant prick, which made her even more convinced he was NID or Special Ops or both. Why did it always have to be the most attractive men who were such complete dicks? An image of McKay popped unbidden and unwanted into her mind and she mentally jabbed herself in the ribs with an elbow for ever thinking McKay could be classified as ‘attractive’.

“We think Jackson lied about the jar being broken when he found it.”

Carter gritted her teeth. “Daniel doesn’t tell lies.”

The look of disbelief Teal’c'c gave her seemed to be straight from the heart. “Has he done something to you?”

“What?”

“Some kind of hypnotism?”

She glared at him. “If he says the jar was broken when he found it, it was broken when he found it.” She had been determined not to ask the question but her curiosity got the better of her. “What was in the other one anyway?” As Teal’c drew her into the shrubbery, she could smell his aftershave, the faint scent of his soap, and his coffee. She wondered what his skin would taste like if she licked it then gave herself a vigorous mental shake. “Look, if you’ve got something to say then say it. Tell me what you found.”

Teal’c spoke rapidly. “There was an…entity in the sealed jar. A living thing. Going by the tomb art we think it’s parasitic in nature. It enters a host body and takes control of it. In the case of the missing pharaoh, it turned him from an easygoing shepherd boy into a bloodthirsty tyrant. If Jackson’s translation is right then the guy must have killed tens of thousands. In all the pictures his eyes are glowing. We think that’s something to do with the entity that possessed him. We think his mate was also possessed by one of these entity things. They both got sealed into jars, possibly by another alien who didn’t like all the attention they were drawing to his activities, and they stayed in them until Jackson and Gardner horned in there and broke the jar.”

Carter shook her head. “Are you a conspiracy nut or NID because, frankly, I’ve never been able to tell you guys apart from the ones who sit outside Area 51 trying to photograph your alien spaceships? Oh yes, and how are the Roswell grays? Keeping well, I trust?”

Teal’c moistened his lips. “You know, generally, I like my women with attitude, but given that I think you’re hanging out with a serial killer forgive me for not being in the mood for the whole dumb blonde thing.”

“Do you have any idea how crazy you sound?” she demanded.

“Two women are dead who used to work here. His grandfather is dead. The guy has been suffering blackouts and hallucinations ever since he came back from Egypt. How come he can translate a language that nobody else can? How come he can read those glyphs when no one else can?”

“That’s why you’re here?” She put a hand up to her in disbelief. “To see if Daniel is harboring an…alien?”

“If he’d been just an ordinary archaeologist we could have just taken him into custody and run our tests but as he’s the one with all the money, his family don’t let him out of their sight. The guy is better guarded than Fort Knox. All I’ve been able to do is try to keep an eye on things since he came out of the hospital and he’s still managed to get past me to kill twice.”

Carter shook her head. “I don’t care what evidence you think you have, you’re wrong. Daniel has never killed anyone.”

Teal’c gave her a look of exasperation, “Damnit, Captain. He’s dangerous. Our office has been trying to get the paperwork through to get him transferred from Cheyenne Mountain to Area 51 for the past seven days and Hammond has been blocking us at every turn. What does Jackson do, anyway? Tell you all to look into his eyes and then say you’re feeling very sleepy?”

“He’s a good man,” she hissed at him angrily. 

Teal’c sighed. “I’m sure he is. What’s left of him. But if he’s got an entity inside him that used to be a murderous tyrant in Ancient Egypt, he doesn’t really have a lot of choice about what it chooses to do with his body, does he? Jackson himself probably doesn’t even know he’s doing these things. They’re probably just nightmares to him.”

“He didn’t do it!” She didn’t know why she was so certain she was right, but she was. She knew that NID had got their sums wrong somehow. “Daniel said the jar had been broken centuries before. It’s in his report on the dig. He said it could even have happened just after the God-King was interred. If there was some entity that got inside him and was giving him blackouts, he would remember the jar being intact, and he would probably remember fainting, wouldn’t he? Then waking up to find the pieces were broken? But he didn’t. He said that he and Doctor Gardner found the sealed chamber together and found the jars together and one was broken and one was intact. No fainting. No blackout. Perfect recall of the whole event.”

For the first time there was a flicker of doubt in Teal’c’s expressive dark eyes. “Okay, yeah, that bothered me a little too. But two women who worked here are dead. Why are they dead if Jackson didn’t kill them?”

“Probably because their boyfriends strangled them. Something that happens rather a lot in this country. You know, if you were a private detective, you’d probably be better at adding up two and two and not making fifty seven.”

“There’s plenty of circumstantial evidence to suggest that…”

“There’s no circumstantial evidence to suggest anything except that you people at Area 51 are completely out of your minds!”

“I’m not from Area 51,” he retorted, and she was pleased to see he seemed to be stung by the idea that anyone would assume he was NID. “I’m Special Operations.”

“Oh yes, another branch of the military famed for their good mental health.”

Teal’c stabbed a finger at her chest. “You know if you weren’t such a smartass bitch, I could…”

She had to stand on tiptoe to even get close to being able to eyeball him back but she did throw out her chin belligerently and give him her best gimlet glare. “You could, what?”

“Do something about this obvious physical attraction between us.”

Standing on tiptoe had brought her mouth into perilously close contact with his. She found herself looking at it, full lips, the kind you really wanted to bite on, and there was that damned scent of coffee and aftershave mixed with a little male sweat and something that seemed to be pure pheromones. Still gazing at his mouth and unconsciously licking her lips, she ground out raggedly, “You’re not my type.”

“And I don’t usually touch skinny blondes with the long end of a pole.” His voice sounded like her hormones felt.

“I like brains, not brawn.”

He snatched a breath that made his chest expand impressively under his open necked shirt. “I have a Masters in Political Science. Brainy enough for you? And anyway I like women with breasts.”

Carter looked down at her cleavage defensively. “What’s wrong with my breasts?”

Teal’c swallowed. “Nothing at all from where I’m standing.”

“Sam…?”

They broke apart like guilty children, Carter becoming aware that her heart was beating too fast and there was a flush upon her skin that couldn’t be explained by the overcast weather. For someone who she guessed prided himself on staying cool in a crisis, Teal’c was also looking noticeably hot and bothered. She decided Daniel had either the best or the worst timing in the world, probably the best. Teal’c was clearly the kind of trouble she wanted to avoid – especially as she already had the unavoidable trouble of McKay to deal with, at least until the Program closed….

“I have to go.” 

As she turned away, Teal’c caught her arm. “Don’t travel alone with him. Let me come back with you.”

She hoped the look she gave him conveyed the full force of her contempt for that idea.

“Captain Carter!” 

As she determinedly walked away she refused to look back, refused to accept the possibility that he might be right about Daniel, and equally refused to acknowledge that he had, without a doubt, the sexiest voice she had ever heard.

“Sam…?”

Daniel was standing in the courtyard, looking around for her plaintively, and she increased her pace. “I’m here, Daniel.”

When he turned around to look at her, she saw he had his hand to his mouth, which was bleeding. At once her anger and protective instincts flared up like the flame of a Bunsen burner and she was at his side in a couple of strides. “What happened?”

He gave her an awkward smile. “That could have gone…better.” As she made to examine his mouth, he gently warded her off. “It’s fine. He just got a little angry.”

She thought that perhaps it was just as well O'Neill hadn’t accompanied Daniel, after all, as he would undoubtedly have lunged straight after Tony, and someone with Special Operations training really shouldn’t be unleashed upon a civilian when in the full spate of rage, however obnoxious that civilian happened to be. “Are we good to go?”

Daniel wiped another well of blood from the side of his mouth with the back of his hand. “Almost. There’s something he has to do. Get. Show me. I don’t know. He’ll be a couple of minutes. Maybe you could wait in the car?”

“Okay.” She forced a smile. “I’ll wait.”

“Thanks.” He looked pale but there was the same determination in his eye she’d noticed when they left Cheyenne Mountain a few hours earlier. She didn’t think Tony was going to be able to budge him an inch on his new resolution whatever emotional blackmail he employed. Daniel had moved on and, whether Tony accepted it or not, he wasn’t going to be returning to this house or the life that he had known here.

She patted him gently on the shoulder. “I’ll be in the car.” 

As she walked across the gravel, she thought about what Teal’c had told her. It was so absurd a part of her almost believed it, except it was impossible to believe when she stood near to him. Daniel, the captive host to some evil entity that used his body to kill and left him no memory of it? That was more than the ‘fugue state’ psychiatrists spoke of when anguished psyche’s fractured into multiple personalities to cope with some event that would otherwise be unbearable. And the facts didn’t support it. If Daniel had, while possessed either by a split personality or an alien worm inside his brain, killed his grandfather, presumably so that he would inherit the Ballard millions, why had his clothes been unspattered by blood? There were security cameras on the campus as he left which clearly showed him wearing the clothing he’d been found in by the police at the scene of the crime. Every pair of socks in his suitcase had been accounted for by his girlfriend and roommate – both of whom were intimately acquainted with his wardrobe. He owned no clothing except those in his suitcase and those he was wearing, and he had made no purchases of clothing en route from the campus to his grandfather’s house or in the months previous to the murder. Which meant unless he’d killed his grandfather naked and then gotten himself showered and dressed again, that he hadn’t done it. The police had checked the shower and it hadn’t been used. There had been footsteps leading down to the nearby river, but they had matched the Nike prints which had proven so common and consequently so untraceable, and they had been two sizes larger than Daniel’s. And why would Daniel have killed his only living relative anyway? He had never used the money for anything. He’d had a complete mental breakdown after finding the body. Why should some alien entity want to kill either Nicholas Ballard or those two maids either? It wasn’t just unlikely, it was just plain stupid. The kind of idiotic non-logic that only the NID could have come up with. Daniel wasn’t possessed by aliens and he wasn’t schizophrenic. She didn’t even think he was mentally ill, just sensitive and over-medicated. A few days of being around comparatively sane people – if one counted McKay as sane – and being watched over by the enigma that was Colonel O'Neill, and Daniel seemed as well adjusted as everyone else on the Stargate Program. 

So absorbed was she in thinking about Daniel’s sanity that she didn’t notice the blood until she was reaching for the car door, then she saw the drops of it on the gravel from the back door. As she peered into the back, a bloody hand reached up and left a red palm print on the glass. As she gasped and reached for her gun, she heard the crunch of gravel behind her.

She was still turning around as the blow fell. As the pain radiated from her skull and darkness swooped, her last thought was: O'Neill is going to kill me.

***

O'Neill felt there was a conversation he and Kawalsky needed to have and it couldn’t happen in the noisy bustle of the station. When he’d invited the man to his rented apartment to discuss what Fraiser had told them and what that well might mean, Kawalsky had nodded at once. He suspected the man might want to ask him about Daniel – another good reason for them not to start a conversation until they were somewhere private. They drove across town to O'Neill’s place, filling each other in on their last interviews, impressions of Gardner, impressions of Bratac, their suspicions about Teal’c and his multiple deceits. Only when they were safely in his apartment did he hand Kawalsky the will and ask him what he thought of it.

“Christ!” Kawalsky jumped out of his chair as if he’d sat down on a red hot poker, staring at the photocopy of the will in horrified comprehension. “Have you read this?”

O'Neill stared at him in disbelief. “About sixteen times. I already told you Daniel left all his money to his maniac stepbrother.”

Kawalsky held it out to him. “Read it again.”

O'Neill noticed that the man’s fingers were shaking and his eyes were alight with excitement. That real ‘the game’s afoot, Watson’ look Kawalsky still got sometimes when he thought he was close to putting all the pieces of the puzzle together. O'Neill took the will from him and read it through again. The same paragraphs he’d read over and over. No bequests to anyone else. The entire estate left to one Anthony Ballard Green. “What am I looking at?”

Kawalsky leaned over him to stab at the bottom line. “This.”

“The date?” O'Neill gave him a look of desperation. “What?”

“The witnesses, Jack! The witnesses!”

And then O'Neill did see it at last and the roulette ball spun gently onto seven black. “Sha’re Farouk and Ivana Novakovitch. They witnessed Daniel’s will.”

“No, they didn’t.”

“What?” O'Neill looked at him in confusion.

“They witnessed Tony’s will. Farouk mentioned it. I didn’t think it was important. Sha’re said she got called into the study along with Ivana to witness Tony’s will. He made a joke about it. He said he’d leave them a little something as a thank you but they weren’t to kill him for it. Sha’re told her husband that she wished Ivana wouldn’t flirt with him. She didn’t like Tony. She didn’t like the way he treated Doctor Jackson. She told her husband that she didn’t understand how Daniel always had so many bruises when he never left the house. She said she signed the will then said she had chores to do and left. Ivana stayed and had a glass of sherry. They were thinking of calling Farouk as a witness that his wife had told him Ivana flirted with other men to try to make the jealous boyfriend motive stick. Sha’re said something else.”

“What?” O'Neill’s mind was whirling with possibilities. He felt so close to uncovering it and he knew Kawalsky was right, that this explained something, he just didn’t know what. He remembered what the man had told him the profiler had said: there was always logic, even in insanity, it was finding the key to the pattern that was the trick to finding the killer, like realizing how the world looked to someone whose vision was distorted.

“Tony joggled Ivana’s elbow while she was signing her name. She said he did it on purpose. Ivana thought it was cute because he was flirting with her. He said it didn’t matter because he had another copy just in case of accidents. He asked her to sign the other copy instead. He pulled the piece of paper down so they could see where to sign and date it and that’s what they did, but Sha’re didn’t like doing it because although she’d read the first document she signed she didn’t get a chance to read the second one. It bothered her. She thought it might be a way for Tony to hurt Doctor Jackson except she thought only a doctor would be dangerous to him by getting him put back into the mental asylum. Her husband said she talked about Doctor Jackson a lot at first until he got angry and jealous and told her to stop. I should have thought of the damned will, but as it was Tony’s I didn’t think it was important.”

O'Neill got to his feet. “Daniel didn’t will Tony anything. Daniel hasn’t made a will. Tony made the will and got Ivana and Sha’re to witness it in readiness for when Daniel was thirty. Then he killed them so that…” His mind had reached the edge of a precipice and stopped.

“So that when Jackson died they couldn’t testify that they hadn’t witnessed Jackson’s will only Tony’s.” Kawalsky’s eyes were still shining with the relief of having solved the puzzle. “Tony’s got A Plan. He’s probably always had a plan, and it was to get his hands on the Ballard money.”

O'Neill felt so sick he thought he might be about to pass out. “Daniel would give it to him if he asked. All he ever had to do was ask.”

Kawalsky shook his head. “You’re not thinking like a psychopath, Jack. It needs to be something he’s won through his own cleverness. You told me the guy got straight ‘F’s through High School, right? Well, what better way to show everyone how wrong they were than for him to win thirty million dollars for himself through his own cleverness and not get caught for it? Jackson just signing it over to him wouldn’t be the same at all. Then it would be tainted. You need to get into the minds of these…”

O'Neill reached out and grabbed the back of the couch to steady himself. “Daniel’s been a dead man walking since he hit thirty. If the Air Force hadn’t taken him to Cheyenne Mountain when they did….” Another wave of sickness rushed through him. “I need to phone General Hammond – make sure Daniel stays in Colorado. Make sure Tony doesn’t get access.”

“Jack, he’s in a concrete bunker underneath a mountain in one of the most secure military installations on the planet. How much safer could he be?” Kawalsky touched his shoulder gently, handsome face serious. “You really care about this guy, don’t you?”

O'Neill swallowed. “I have a horrible feeling he may be my destiny.”

Kawalsky winced. “An ex-mental patient who’s a known victim of abuse? I was hoping you might hook up with someone a little less…complicated.”

“Well, he almost makes me look well adjusted, you have to give him that.”

His partner inclined his head in rueful acknowledge. “Have you told him how you feel?”

O'Neill put a hand up to his head. “I kissed him.”

“And…?”

“And nothing. I kissed him. And then I… ran away.”

“Well, that’s…one approach.”

“Every time he looks at me I just…” He shrugged helplessly. 

Kawalsky said gently, “He’s a sweet kid. You could do worse.”

A smile tugged at O'Neill’s mouth. “Than a schizophrenic murder suspect? You’re a true friend…Charlie.”

They both winced as the word left his mouth. It was too soon. Too raw. Not right yet, maybe never. Kawalsky said, “Jack, even my wife calls me ‘Kawalsky’. It’s fine.”

“I need to call Hammond.” 

He didn’t know how to put everything into words. How much he appreciated Kawalsky’s friendship, how his leaving, that unspoken next step they both knew about but neither had yet mentioned, had nothing to do with the man next to him. At the same time he was still having to snatch air as the realization of how much danger Daniel had been in every minute he was in Gray Gables kept percolating through him. He knew they were right. The theory fitted the facts and the evidence – the way Ivana must have been killed by someone she knew and trusted as, with no sign of forced entry, she had presumably opened the door to her attacker, but Sha’re, the more suspicious maid, had been strangled in the street. It also fitted the psychological profile of the man they had been told to look for, the one with his own twisted logic, the one who would have a good reason for the women’s murders that was neither psycho-sexual nor overtly misogynistic. It fitted the way Tony was around Daniel too, the mood swings between violence and moments of tenderness. Every other part of the plan he had been able to put into practice – although the savagery of Ballard’s murder suggested that he had fuelled himself on methamphetamine to get through it – but he hadn’t quite been able to bring himself to strangle Daniel, putting it off for another day, knowing the money was his whenever he did it, but knowing also that once Daniel was dead, there was no willing him back again. What was that Daniel had said about him being Tony’s life’s work? Perhaps Tony was trapped between two contradictory obsessions, his grand plan to win the money for himself through his own cunning and good planning, and his need to control Daniel’s life, to be the fulcrum of his existence. 

It occurred to him that if Daniel should go back to Gray Gables, he had never been in more danger than now. A dependent Daniel, trapped in his barred penthouse where Tony could have sex with him any time he liked, play with his medication, and keep him as crazy or as sane as he wanted, was someone worth keeping alive. A Daniel who had broken free would need to be killed, not just to ensure the finalization of Tony’s plan but to prevent him escaping. As Kawalsky had pointed out, thank whatever deity might be out there that Daniel was currently safe in Cheyenne Mountain where no harm could come to him even from Tony Ballard-Green.

Still looking at those damning signatures from the dead women on the will, O'Neill dialed the number for Daniel’s office. It was a disappointment when McKay was the one who picked up the phone.

“Doctor Jackson’s office.”

“It’s O'Neill. Can I talk to Daniel?”

“He’s not here right now.”

“What?” O'Neill felt himself go cold again and Kawalsky turned to look at him. “Where is he?”

“He’s kind of where you are. He needed to pick up some books and things so he and Captain Carter went to that house place Doctor Jackson lives in. They were only about an hour behind you. They may be on their way back by –”

O'Neill slammed down the phone and ran for the door. Kawalsky was right behind him. “Gray Gables?”

O'Neill nodded. As they ran for the car, Kawalsky tossing him the keys and he automatically catching them, he knew there was no color in his face, knew his heart was slamming so loudly Kawalsky must be able to hear it, but he didn’t care. He didn’t care about anything right now except finding Daniel alive and well and making sure he stayed that way.

***

“We’re going for a drive.”

“What?” Daniel spun around in confusion to find Tony standing behind him. He’d thought the man was still in the house but he seemed to have come from the garden. Daniel tried to keep his voice low and soothing: “I told you, I have to go back to Cheyenne Mountain. I’m working on something and I don’t have much time. I just came to tell you face to face that I’m moving out.”

Tony reached out and grabbed him by the shoulder, Daniel sighed and let himself be jerked against the man’s body. Tony could flex and roar all he liked, sooner or later he was going to have to accept the inevitable fact that Daniel was leaving and there was nothing he could do about it. 

“We’re going for a drive. We have things to discuss and we can’t talk about them here.”

Daniel darted him a look of surprise. Tony wasn’t usually big on talking. Especially talking about serious issues. Half of all their known conversations had probably consisted of Tony shouting at him to shut up and him vainly asking Tony to leave him alone. “Does it have to be today?”

“Yes.”

Tony’s eyes were steely. Some strange mask seemed to have come down during their conversation upstairs. After Tony had punched him and Daniel picked himself up off the floor and explained quietly that it didn’t matter how many times he hit him, he was still leaving and there was still nothing Tony could do about it, an odd calm had settled over Tony. Daniel liked to think it was acceptance, but it was hard to tell.

“It has to be today, and it has to be now.”

Daniel sighed. O'Neill would probably have advised a stand up drag out fight at this point but he honestly thought that there were times when it was worth digging in your toes, and times when it was worth meeting the other person halfway. In his own warped way, Tony had tried to take care of him, and he had got him out of the psychiatric hospital. There were lots of bad memories between them, but there were a few good ones as well, so he probably did owe him at least one serious conversation.

“Okay. I just need to tell Sam…”

“I’ve already told her.”

Daniel frowned in confusion. “Told her what? What did she say?”

Tony’s face was still an odd mask, face and voice equally expressionless. “She’s going to book into a hotel until we get back. She reminded you to keep your phone switched on. Let’s go.” He caught Daniel’s arm and pulled him after him.

As Daniel was yanked across the gravel, he couldn’t make sense of what Tony had said. “I don’t have my phone with me. I left it in Cheyenne Mountain by mistake. I told Sam that on the plane.”

As they rounded the corner he saw the two cars, still parked there, Sam’s impersonally sleek black USAF vehicle and Tony’s Porsche. Two little chills in as many moments. “How is she getting to the hotel if her car’s still here?”

Tony abruptly reached out and grabbed him by the hair, yanking his head back savagely. The gun barrel stared at him impassively and Daniel found himself gazing into its single eye with all the petrified incomprehension of one of Odysseus’ soldiers captured by Polyphemus. “Shut up and get in or I’ll kill you here.”

There was a look in Tony’s eyes he’d never seen before, not just a rage but a fear of what he was about to do. “Tony…?”

“Get in the fucking car!” Tony screamed it so loudly, cooing pigeons from a nearby tree took flight and Daniel became aware of the pregnant stillness of the air, trapped heat waiting for a storm to set it free. Tony threw him against the passenger door so hard it winded him and he groped blindly for the handle. 

“Is Sam okay?” He got in carefully, putting on his seatbelt without being told, trying to tiptoe around Tony verbally as if he was an ammo dump on which a lighted match had just been dropped.

“Who fucking cares?” Tony put on his sunglasses so that even his eyes were hidden. He twisted the key in the ignition savagely, flooring the engine, before abruptly releasing the handbrake. They shot forward in a roar of engine and spitting spray of gravel. The last sight Daniel had of Gray Gables was Maria’s shocked face as she looked out of the open front door.

 

As they screeched onto the main road, a low groan sounded from the backseat of the car. Daniel darted a horrified look in Tony’s direction but the man was unreachable, fingers gripping the wheel, jaw clenched, eyes unreadable behind his mirrored shades. Daniel twisted around in his seat and saw a large man who looked vaguely familiar lying on the back seat of the car. There was blood all over his chest from what looked like a bullet wound.

“Oh my God. Tony, stop!” Daniel scrambled over the back of his seat to land awkwardly in the back of the car, grabbing at the seat to prevent himself landing on the wounded man. “Tony!” 

As his stepbrother only increased his speed, Daniel bent over the wounded man. “You’re the gardener. Tony, for Christ’s sake, stop the car!” He tentatively peeled back the cloth from around the wound, wincing as the other man winced. “Can you hear me?”

“I’m Ray Teal’c. Special Operations.” Blood welled from the injured man’s mouth as he spoke and he was breathing shallowly, trying to limbo under the pain. 

“Who shot you?” 

Teal’c’s gaze darted to the driver’s seat and Daniel put a hand up to his head. He pulled off his jacket and then yanked his t-shirt over his head. Speaking rapidly, he said, “Tony, he’s lost a lot of blood. We need to get him to a hospital. It was an accident, right? You didn’t mean to shoot him. We can tell the police that. I can tell O'Neill…”

“Shut up.” Tony darted a cold glance over his shoulder. “Or I’ll put the next bullet in his brain.”

Grimacing savagely, Daniel used his t-shirt to try to stop the bleeding, giving Teal’c a smile that he hoped was reassuring as he did so. “You’re going to be fine. We’ll get you to a hospital and…”

“We’re not going to the hospital.” Tony’s voice was chilling. “He asked for it. He was hiding in the car. He’s been spying on me for months. I don’t like spies.”

“I was watching Jackson!” Teal’c spat out.

Daniel winced and wiped the blood from his mouth with the edge of his t-shirt. “Don’t talk.” He tried to remember what he knew about gunshot wounds and realized he’d never known anything about them except what he’d seen at the movies. But he guessed with a chest wound you should try to prevent air getting into them, so the t-shirt wrapped around his chest was probably a good idea, and he was sure you were also meant to keep them warm. He hastily draped his jacket over the wounded man, trying to give him another smile. Talking quietly over his shoulder he said, “Tony, please, just drive to the hospital.”

Tony put the car into fourth gear. “We’re going to Saal.” The landscape was blurring past like a smear of wet paint. 

Daniel clenched his fist. “We can make a detour. We can leave him outside the doors if you don’t want to stop. You have to give him a chance.”

“I don’t have to give him a damned thing.”

Bowing his head, Daniel tried to think how to get through to him. He kept his voice soft, even as the miles whipped past and the blood continued to ooze and pump. “Tony. It’s a human life and you could save it. All you have to do is drive to the hospital. We’ve both lost people. We both know how that feels.”

No answer.

Daniel didn’t know if he was getting through to him or not. He cast around for inspiration. “I’ll give you anything you want to take him to the hospital. Do you want the money? You know all you ever had to do was ask. I’ll sign it over to you now. You can have all of it.”

Still no answer except for Tony putting the car into fifth. They were getting farther away from the turn off to the nearest hospital now. He couldn’t remember where the next one was. “I’ll stay.” He swallowed. “I won’t leave. I won’t go to Colorado. Tony…please. I’ll stay with you. I’ll do what you say. I won’t be any more trouble.”

Tony seemed to be gazing at him in the rearview mirror. It was hard to tell the direction in which he was looking with those mirrored sunglasses hiding his eyes. Daniel moistened his lips, feeling sick with the helplessness of his position, the life he could feel ebbing from the wounded man with each passing minute. 

“I’ll take my pills every day.” He didn’t know what else to offer him. His feelings of desperation weren’t helped when he looked down at Teal’c. He was very obviously a dying man. “You have to hang on,” he pleaded quietly. “I can get through to him, I can, but you have to keep breathing.”

Teal’c gritted his teeth. “I’m not going anywhere.”

His voice sounded a lot stronger than he looked and Daniel forced a watery smile, covering him more warmly with his jacket. “Do you have a family?”

“A son. Ryan.”

He thought of O'Neill’s son, that picture he still carried in his wallet, the family in the sunlight shattered by that single gunshot. “How old is he?”

“Five. My wife and I are divorced. He stays with me on the weekends sometimes.”

“I lost my father when I was eight. It’s not an experience I’d recommend.” Daniel bent low over Teal’c to whisper to him, “Do you have a phone?”

“He took it,” Teal’c whispered back. “And my gun.” He looked up at Daniel curiously and Daniel wondered what he was looking for. He hoped it wasn’t a bright light. 

Daniel darted a pleading look at his stepbrother. “Tony…”

“He can lie there and bleed.”

“He’s a human being!”

Tony glanced over his shoulder dismissively. “So what?”

Daniel frowned at him in disbelief. “You can’t mean that. If you want to punish me – punish me. I’m sorry I left without asking you first. I’m sorry I told you I was going to Colorado but I take it back. I won’t go. I’ll stay.”

“It’s too late for that.”

Daniel ran a bloodstained hand through his hair. “Tell me what I can do to make you take him to a hospital and I’ll do it.”

“You went off with those soldiers and you didn’t even look back.”

“They needed my help.” Daniel amended hastily, “But I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have gone with them. I see that now. I’ll stay with you and Aunt Zinnia from now on.”

“Give me a blow job.”

Daniel looked up in shock. Tony hadn’t looked around. He was still driving. But he had definitely said it. Nausea rose in his throat at the thought but he swallowed hard. “Will you take him to the hospital afterwards?”

“Maybe.” 

As he made to climb over the passenger seat to obey, Teal’c reached out and grabbed his wrist. “Jackson, don’t do it.” His expression was curious, still searching Daniel’s eyes for something he didn’t seem to be finding.

“I don’t care,” Daniel told him quietly.

“It won’t do any good.”

Daniel whispered in his ear. “He’s better when he’s…come.”

Teal’c looked at him with a mixture of confusion and disbelief. “You don’t even know me.”

“I can’t watch you die and not do anything,” Daniel retorted fiercely. 

The wounded man gazed into his eyes for a moment longer and then said faintly, “The jar really was broken when you found it, wasn’t it?”

Realizing, Teal’c must have lost so much blood he was no longer making sense, Daniel gritted his teeth and climbed over into the passenger seat again. Although he thought he was going to hurl from the combined horror of Teal’c’s blood all over him bringing back a kaleidoscope of memories of Nick’s blood-spattered kitchen, and the prospect of having to do what Tony wanted, he knew it had to be done. He hadn’t been able to save Sha’re or Ivana or his grandfather from their nameless faceless killer, but he had driven Tony to this, unhinged something in his mind and caused him to shoot the innocent man in the back seat. He had to do whatever was necessary to try to save him. 

***

“Jack. Over here.” Kawalsky had a nose for blood like a tracker dog, and he’d noticed the splatters as he got out of the car. 

Already striding towards the front door of Gray Gables, O'Neill wasn’t in the mood to stop for anything but at the sight of those crimson stains on the gravel, he stopped dead. Kawalsky crouched down by the drive. “It’s recent. Not completely dry yet.”

They looked at the tire tracks and realized the blood had dripped from where a car had been standing. Looking at the tire imprints, the dips in the gravel where the stationery vehicle had stood it was clear the bleeding person had been put not into the trunk but the back of the car. That could be a positive sign. A corpse would probably have been shoved into the trunk. It could just be a bloody nose. 

“No blood leading here.” Kawalsky cast around with expert eyes. “Footprints. A lot of footprints. This is kind of confused. But it looks like something’s been…dragged.”

They exchanged one horrified look as they drew their guns and then followed the scraped furrow in the gravel. Don’t let it be Daniel, O'Neill thought. Or if it is Daniel, let him be alive. You took my son, you son of a bitch, the least you can do is not take Daniel too. The trail led into the bushes, twigs of laurel and privet carelessly snapped, where a person or corpse had been dragged and then dumped. They saw the shoes first, black and low-heeled but decidedly female feet. O'Neill was almost ashamed of his relief.

“Christ…” Kawalsky crouched down next to the unconscious woman and O'Neill’s heart turned over when he saw it was Carter, Daniel’s supposed chaperone. “She’s still breathing.” Kawalsky spoke rapidly into his radio, summoning an ambulance, nodding to O'Neill that he should go.

O'Neill sprinted to the house to find the housekeeper standing on the steps looking anxious. “Where’s Daniel?” O'Neill demanded.

“He went with Mister Ballard-Green.”

O'Neill felt sick. “Went where?”

“They didn’t say.” Maria bit her lip. “Mister Ballard-Green was very angry.” 

He was already running back to where Kawalsky was looking after Carter. The other man had taken off his jacket to drape over her, reminding O'Neill uncomfortably of the way he’d laid his own coat over that corpse.

“You hang in there, Captain,” Kawalsky was saying comfortingly to the unconscious woman. “The ambulance is on its way.” 

“Tony took Daniel. No one knows where.”

Kawalsky looked up at O'Neill and evidently read all he needed to know in his eyes. “Don’t kill him unless you have to.”

O'Neill nodded, ran for the car and turned the key in the ignition. He didn’t know where Tony was, he only knew that he was now certain the man had killed at least three people and was probably planning to kill Daniel if he hadn’t done so already. He sped down the road, seeing the map in his mind that he’d traced so many times since his first visit to Gray Gables. The twists and turns that led from the city out to the quiet wooded land where Nicholas Ballard, Doctor of Archaeology, had met his brutal death.

Kawalsky’s voice crackled through to him on the radio. “Tell me where you’re going?”

“Ballard’s house.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t know where else to go.”

Kawalsky said quietly, “Jack, Tony’s car is still in the drive, which means he took Carter’s. I’ve got her driving license and she drives a 1988 black USAF special service Mustang, license number 87B 3132. I’ve put out an All Points and – okay the ambulance is here, I’m going to go with her. Keep in touch. Call for back up…”

As the radio switched off, O'Neill had to fight the urge to bang his head against the car seat because he recognized the specification of Carter’s car. She had one of the specially fitted out Mustangs the USAF used to chase U-2 spy planes. The damned U-2s had always been bastards to land. Because of its lightness and long wingspan it was effectively a powered glider and had tremendous lift. Basically, once it left the ground it did not want to make contact again. The only way to land it was to stall the engine about two feet from the ground but because of the long wingspan it was frighteningly easy to dig a wingtip into the ground and crash. The pilot’s ability to judge his exact distance from the ground was further complicated by the pressure suit he wore and the long nose of the U-2. The USAF’s solution had been to use chase cars with the biggest engine available, driven by another U-2 pilot who could talk to the pilot by radio and tell him how many feet he was from the ground and if his wings were level. O'Neill had been pilot and adviser in the chase car in his time and those chase cars could move. If Carter was using a reconditioned ex-chase car, he wasn’t going to catch it even in his own Chevy El Camino.

Damned frustrated pilots and their adrenaline junkie tendencies. He swore under his breath and gunned the engine, but he didn’t think it was going to be enough, not the All Points or the helicopters Kawalsky was probably summoning, or even his own desperate need for Daniel not to die. Tony had been working on this plan since he was seventeen years old. O'Neill doubted anything except a miracle was going to divert him from it now.

***

Teal’c watched helplessly as Jackson climbed back over the seat, surprisingly graceful, perhaps from all those years of wriggling around in submerged tombs. He’d forgotten just how bad the pain of a gunshot wound was and everything kept graying in and out of focus. He’d been in enough combat situations over the years to have looked death in the face more than once, but this seemed like a particularly pointless way to die. He’d positioned himself so carefully in the back seat, crouching down to be out of view of the rearview mirror, determined that Carter wasn’t going to drive back to the airport in the company of someone he was almost convinced was a murderer. Then the back door had opened and while he was still turning his head in disbelief, Ballard-Green had fired straight into his chest. Then he’d taken the gun and phone from him while Teal’c was still reeling from the pain and shock and slammed the door, locking him inside. He’d tried to pull himself up, seeing Carter advance, desperately trying to warn her, and then Ballard-Green had stepped out from behind the hedge and clubbed her to the ground. He’d watched the man drag her unconscious or dying body out of view and dump her in the undergrowth before striding back to the house. While Teal’c had struggled futilely with the door handle, darkness had claimed him. When he’d woken up, Jackson had been bent over him anxiously, nothing in his eyes except concern.

Talking hurt, but he couldn’t let him do this. Even with everything blurring in and out of focus he’d seen the look of revulsion in the guy’s eyes when Tony had given his conditions. No way was Tony going to let either of them live whatever Jackson did. This would buy them some time at best and the price was too high. 

“Jackson, don’t do it…”

Jackson gave him a last look over the seat, face curiously blank although his eyes were full of compassion for him, then he dropped down out of sight and Teal’c could only bang his head against the seat in pain and frustration. 

When he tried to move, agony flared through his chest and he fell back, the world graying in and out, a hissing in his ears that told him unconsciousness was very close. Dimly through the hissing, he could hear the zipper being tugged down, then Tony’s granite hard, “Do it.” He actively tried not to hear the sounds of sucking, stomach rebelling. 

“You son of a bitch, Tony,” he breathed, holding Jackson’s blood-stained t-shirt to his chest, the way Jackson had done, to try to slow the bleeding. 

Ballard-Green’s only response was to floor the gas pedal, the car so fast now it was like being airborne. Where were the damned traffic cops when you needed them? But they were on an almost empty road now, off the main highways, heading along the two lane rural roads to the nowhere that was Saal. Oh Christ, he could hear it. Everything Tony was saying to Jackson as he made him blow him, those strangled sounds of sucking and choking. Tony was moving rhythmically as he drove, his head going back against the head rest every few seconds, voice harsh with excitement as he told Jackson how right he was getting it.

Teal’c put a hand across his eyes, almost grateful the pain in his body was so bad as at least it was a distraction from the reality of what was happening in the front seat. If they crashed would Jackson get his neck broken or Tony? Jackson, most likely. The steering wheel would probably snap it. So he couldn’t even pray that Tony lost control of the car, although at this speed and given the way he was clearly getting close to orgasm, it had to be a real possibility. He could hear Tony groaning, louder and louder, head jerking back as presumably his hips jerked forward. Teal’c wanted to put his hands over his ears but soldiers didn’t do that. Tony was vulnerable right now. There had to be a way to turn that to their advantage. He reached around on the floor, trying to find something he could use as a weapon, but the back seat was clean, Carter clearly the meticulous type. You could tell she’d never been married. He always made Drew-Anne keep a tire iron under the seat while Carter obviously relied on her USAF issue revolver to keep her safe on deserted highways if she had a breakdown. Even the act of reaching for the floor made the pain jackknife through him, he was clinging to consciousness by a fingertip when Tony’s abrupt jerk of the wheel, threw him against the back of the driver’s seat. He ricocheted off it to land between the seats, unable to stifle a cry of pain as he impacted with the floor. 

The car swerved off the road, and the windows were spattered with gravel, like a hailstorm against the glass. He was aware of them rushing forward, speed reduced but still out of control, and then they were skidding to a halt as Tony panted harshly, hissing with savage appreciation. The car was moving to Tony’s rhythm now, engine still purring, the seat jolting, springs moving. Teal’c closed his eyes but knew Tony’s fingers were twisted in Jackson’s hair, forcing himself in deeper while Jackson endured it for his sake. Lying on his side between the seats, he peered under them for something he could use as a weapon, but the interior seemed to have been valeted. He had a sudden image of detectives going over the vehicle for clues, collecting blood stains on cotton buds, fibers and hairs all picked up on tweezers and dropped into little plastic bags, evidence gathered to try to solve his murder.

Tony’s grunts were getting louder and faster, the seat jolting, the car moving in time to each jerk of his hungry hips then Tony made an inarticulate sound and Teal’c saw his head snap back. He tried to haul himself up, knowing this was the instant when he had to act, but his body was treacherous with blood loss, so weak he didn’t recognize it, and he fell back, faint and bleeding more heavily than before. 

He came around from half passing out to see Jackson now in the passenger seat, head jammed against the passenger window while Tony kissed him hungrily, clearly wanting to taste himself in Jackson’s mouth. He could see Tony’s throat working as he thrust his tongue halfway down Jackson’s no doubt bruised throat. Jackson had his eyes closed, not the way people usually closed their eyes when kissing, but just trying to blot it out, to get through it until it was over. Tony tugged at Jackson’s clothes and only then did Jackson open his eyes. As Tony reluctantly withdrew his tongue from his mouth, Jackson said quietly, “You said you’d call an ambulance.”

Tony smiled and reached out to stroke Jackson’s uneven bangs back from his face before kissing him again, arrogance coming off him like a scent. Teal’c hoped he’d never kissed a woman like that, as if he was doing her the biggest favor in the world by sticking his tongue down her throat, stroking a finger down Jackson’s face in a mockery of tenderness. Tony bit Jackson’s lower lip then tightened his fingers in his hair, pulling his head back further to expose the pale skin of his throat. As Teal’c once again tried and failed to get up, Tony bit Jackson on the neck, making him wince and shudder, but endure it, staying still so it could be done, even though it hurt. Teal’c felt sick with the realization of how wrong he’d been about everything, particularly about Jackson. How many years had this guy been left in the power of the sick fuck currently tearing at his clothes?

Jackson just sounded weary, no energy left for anger. “Use your phone to call an ambulance.”

“You could have killed me yourself.” Tony licked the blood from Jackson’s neck and then kissed him again. Gazing into his eyes with something almost like tenderness. He stroked a finger across his mouth. “Some Ancient Egyptian poison in my breakfast cereal. That’s all it would have taken.”

Quietly, Jackson said, “I’m not a murderer. And you don’t have to be one either. Call an ambulance and we can all walk away without anyone’s blood on our hands.”

Tony caught his wrist and held it up. Teal’c saw the wet glisten of his blood still on Jackson’s palms and realized it must be on Tony’s cock as well now. “Too late for you, Danny. And too late for me too.” He yanked Jackson around, frighteningly strong in the way he manhandled him, making him kneel on the passenger seat. 

Teal’c saw him tug at Jackson’s jeans and slammed his head against the floor of the car. He couldn’t avoid being a spectator to this except by keeping his eyes closed, he had a perfect view between the seats. 

Jackson looked over his shoulder at him, still not fighting. “Tony it isn’t too late. He’s still alive. If you’ll just call an ambulance –” He broke off as Tony moved behind him and Teal’c saw the revulsion wash over his face before he turned his head away. “You can do whatever you want,” he said in a dead voice. “Just call an ambulance afterwards.”

Tony spat on his palm, like he’d done it a thousand times before, curiously matter of fact. “It’s too late for both of us. This is just another way to say goodbye.” And then he moved in close behind Jackson and Teal’c could only watch helplessly as Jackson’s body jerked in pain. This time he closed his eyes and kept them closed, refusing to open them even as the whole car jolted to the rhythm of Tony’s madness.

 

Daniel had learned to disassociate himself from his body a long time ago. He couldn’t stop the pain, but he could make it about something else, the pain separate from its cause. So, he couldn’t pretend he wasn’t being hurt, but he could at least pretend he wasn’t being fucked while a man bled to death on the back seat of the car. He thought about the Stargate instead and the glyphs around its surface. They reminded him of something. Something in Egypt. A conversation between him and O'Neill. What had they talked about anyway except Sha’re’s murder and the bruises on his body – oh God that hurt – something else though, something ordinary. He hated the scent of Tony’s come. The musty bitterness of it. The way it clung to his skin afterwards. Tony grabbing his wrist when he tried to get out of bed to wash off the semen, wanting to inhale it on his skin, the proof that he had possessed him. He’d thought that the next time he went through this he’d try and make it between him and O'Neill in his head, but now the reality was upon him, he couldn’t do it, couldn’t drag O'Neill into this, and it wouldn’t have worked anyway because he’d certainly never fantasized about O'Neill hurting him like this. Something about the sky. That was it. The sky being too wide and too gray and the stars in Egypt being so much… The stars. The pyramids and the stars. That was it. That had to be – 

Tony grabbed his hair and pulled his head back, he always seemed to know when Daniel was getting away from him, letting his mind float free. He always wanted an audience for the performance, needed and demanded that the focus should be on him throughout. He stuck his tongue in Daniel’s ear, wet and hot, then nipped at the lobe, thrusts slow and deep. He liked to brag he could keep it up all night, but he was a three-minute fuck for the most part. It was the drugs that kept him hard all night, not his own virility. Daniel looked out of the window and realized for the first time that they were in the drive of his grandfather’s house, clearly visible from the shuttered windows. He shuddered with revulsion at Tony doing this to him here, where Nick’s ghost might be able to see it.

“Tony, don’t… Not here. What about Nick? Tony…” He could hear the edge of panic in his voice.

Tony held him by waist and thrust harder. “He’s dead.”

“I know, but what if he…? Please, not here. Not here…!” 

 

Teal’c had thought the resignation from Jackson was the worst thing to bear but this was worse – his panicked resistance and Tony’s brutal suppression of it. He just used his superior weight and strength to keep doing what he wanted to do while Jackson struggled vainly to escape him. There had been nothing consensual about it before but at least it hadn’t been like this, Jackson frantic and struggling and Tony brutally fucking him into the passenger seat while he tried and failed to get free.

Teal’c hadn’t even realized he was shouting at Tony to stop, for Christ’s sake stop, until the man abruptly reached for his gun and then pointed it unwaveringly at Teal’c’s head. “Shut up.”

The sight of the gun jolted Jackson out of his panic and he stopped struggling. Swallowing, he said, “Tony, don’t. I’m sorry I fought you. I shouldn’t have done that.”

Tony nuzzled his ear almost lovingly, “No, you shouldn’t.” He turned the gun around and held the muzzle to Jackson’s mouth. “Open up.” 

Teal’c thought this was hell. Right here and right now. Body too weak to make him anything except a spectator to Tony and his sick games, pain so blinding even the smallest movement threatened to send him spiraling into unconsciousness. There were tears of frustration as well as pain in his eyes as Jackson opened his mouth and sucked on the barrel of the gun while Tony fucked him with confident cruelty, as if it was his right, as if Jackson was his to do with as he wished, including kill. Because there was no doubt in Teal’c’s mind now that Tony was a murderer, just as there was no doubt in his mind that Jackson wasn’t possessed of any alien entity, whatever Maybourne seemed to think, and he hadn’t killed anyone, probably not even that damned dog. But that wasn’t going to save him because Tony was going to murder him anyway, just because he could.

He closed his eyes and felt the tears running down his cheeks, even though he’d been shot before and never cried then. He could feel lights going off in his head, a firework display of helpless rage because he was the audience Tony needed to do this, he was the reason this was happening. This was Tony’s farewell performance before he took Jackson into the same house, where all those years before he’d bludgeoned his grandfather to death, and put a bullet in his head. It was a very small consolation to Teal’c to know that before Tony committed his final act of cruelty the sole reluctant witness to his rape of Jackson was already going to be dead.

 

It was almost gentlemanly, the way Tony came around to the passenger side to open the door for him. Still kneeling on the seat, wet warmth trickling down his thighs, Daniel was shaking so hard he could hardly pull his jeans over his hips. O'Neill had bought him these and now they had Tony’s come all over them, as did he. And Teal’c was going to die. He was going to lie in the back of that car and bleed to death because Daniel had failed to get through to Tony. As his fingers shook on his zipper, he tried to remember if the phone was still connected in the house. He remembered asking Zinnia to make sure the electricity bill was paid because of the artifacts in crates that hadn’t been moved out yet, all the small things he hadn’t been mentally well enough to deal with that had left Nick’s house a museum trapped in time. The button on his jeans was too difficult to manage with his trembling fingers, he had to hope the zipper would hold by itself. Everything had slipped quietly out of focus. He seemed to have lost his shoes, and one sock, and everything smelled of Tony now, just the way Tony liked it.

“Up you come.” Tony helped him out of the car quite kindly, a hand under his elbow to steady him.

Daniel stumbled out of the car and would have fallen if Tony hadn’t hauled him up. He wondered if he could run for the house. He was a pretty good sprinter. Tony was significantly heavier than he was and probably wouldn’t be able to make such good time – if only his legs would just stop acting like spaghetti, he could probably make it.

Tony put an arm around his shoulders and pulled him in close, whispering in his ear: “The phones are dead, Daniel. Just like Nick. And Ivana. And Sha’re.”

Daniel felt his veins turn from blood to ice. “What?”

“It was my plan, you see. You have to have a plan.” Tony shook out his keyring and Daniel saw the key to the front door glinting in the fading sunlight. “Mother didn’t want to take you in, can you believe that? And you an orphan and your only living relative in the nuthouse. I told her you were our meal-ticket for life. Why should some foster parents get their hands on all the money? Did she really think anyone was going to take you in for love when you were Nicholas Ballard’s sole heir?” He turned the key in the door. “Melvin got it. Melvin and I have always been on the same page. He always hated the Ballards anyway. Stupid dreamers. The money was wasted on them. Why shouldn’t we have it as much as you?”

As Tony pulled him into the house, Daniel automatically reached for pills he didn’t have, Tony’s grip a vice on his arm. He could feel the panic spiraling and shrieking at him, like a heath full of banshees on Walpurgis Nacht. Ironically, he was less afraid of the man with the gun than of being here, in this place, where there might still be flecks of blood on the walls. For the first time he thought about O'Neill and how angry the man was going to be with him for letting this happen. He swallowed. “Is Sam alive?”

“Who?” Tony looked irritated at being interrupted.

“Captain Carter. The woman who was with me.”

Tony shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know. What does it matter? I’m telling you about my plan.”

As the man tugged him down the corridor, Daniel dug in his toes, the walls were vanishing up into darkness and begin to close in on him. “I can’t…”

“Yes, you can.” Tony grabbed him by the hair and yanked him forward. “You need to see the kitchen.”

“Not in there…” Daniel tried to grab his wrist but Tony flung him against the wall, tugged the belt from Daniel’s waist and used it to lash his hands behind his back. Then he twisted his fingers in his hair again and dragged him on down the corridor. 

“Here we go.” 

Daniel had to snatch each breath as he was pulled into the kitchen. He closed his eyes but he could still see the images seared on his retina, the blood spatters everywhere and his grandfather’s sightless eyes. 

“This is where I killed him.”

“What?” Daniel opened his eyes to stare at him aghast. “No…”

“Yes.” Tony looked around the room. “It had to be done. You had to be the one with the money.”

Daniel felt the room began to revolve and stepped back to lean against the wall, gulping for air that seemed in perilously short supply. “He would have given you any money you asked for.”

“That wasn’t the plan.” Tony looked at him out of eyes that he couldn’t pretend belonged to a sane person. “I didn’t want to ask for it. I wanted to own it.”

“Why…?” he demanded in disbelief. “To do what?”

Tony shrugged. “Why shouldn’t it be mine? I wanted it more than either of you. Even more than Melvin. He just wanted to buy some respectability and a nice clinic with his name on the door.”

Slumped against the wall, Daniel could see the pattern forming now, jagged shards of blood stained glass, but still a pattern to be read. “You drugged me. When I was in the hospital.”

“Yes.” Tony half-smiled. “Every week. You were getting to be bothersome, threatening to tell Nick. Maybe you already had. I killed Buster. He trusted me so he came when I called him. Don’t worry, it was quick. I gave you some LSD I bought from a guy at school. And a sleeping draught. A really heavy one. I didn’t want you tapdancing off the balcony or anything. I just figured you’d have some weirdshit dreams then wake up and find Buster there and think you’d done it. And you know what, it worked like clockwork. You did everything right. Just the way I’d planned it in my head. I think that was when I really got fond of you. You called for me, do you remember that?” He turned his head.

Leaning against the wall, Daniel shook his head. “No.”

“Well, you did. You called for me and you told me you’d done something terrible and I should call the police. And Mother was panicking, I remember, and I felt so calm. I called Melvin and I knew everything was going to be fine. He gave you a sedative and took you away and we never discussed it, you know. Me and Melvin. It just happened that we both knew the other one would do what was necessary and eventually the money would be there. I visited you every weekend. Do you remember that?”

Daniel moistened his lips. “I remember.”

“I gave you drugs. I figured in a place like that you were better off being a little crazy anyway. Then that bastard orderly interfered and Nick interfered and they messed with my plan.”

Quietly, Daniel said, “So, that’s all I’ve ever been to you: a means to an end, a cog in your wheel?”

Tony glanced at him in surprise. “That was what you were supposed to be. Except I got fond of you. I missed you, you know. When you were at college. Then you went abroad, and that was so wrong. With that bitch of a girlfriend you had. I knew she was fucking you every chance she got. And you were happy, weren’t you? Happy without me?”

“I’m an archaeologist.” Daniel felt curiously calm, despite the flashbacks of horror, and for the first time in a long time he felt truly angry, a clear cold anger in which everything was suddenly as obvious as it had previously been blurred. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted to be. That’s what I love doing. Being in Egypt was the best time of my life. It was the only time I ever felt like I was truly me.”

Tony shrugged. “Well, that didn’t work for me.”

“You had the money!” Daniel elbowed himself off the wall. “Melvin and Zinnia had charge of it. You knew I didn’t care what you took from it. Why did you have to kill Nick?”

Tony looked around the kitchen and shivered. “He told me I wasn’t good for you. He told me… He had no right to tell me what to do! I took you on when he was too crazy to look after you. You’d have been in a fucking orphanage if it wasn’t for me. So, I took some payment on account. Well, who wouldn’t? It never did you any harm. I never hurt you.”

“You always hurt me.” Daniel twisted his wrists against the bonds, trying to stop the shaking of grief and anger. “You hurt me and then when I asked you to stop you hit me. That was the way it was. That was the way it always was.” He realized that if Tony had been kidding himself, then so had he. It had never been anything except that.

Tony spun around angrily. “He was giving me this lecture about how I needed to think about what I’d done and how I had choices, how everyone has choices and I could choose a better way.” He shook his head. “I don’t even remember now. He made me mad and I hit him and once I’d started there didn’t seem any point in stopping until it was done. I’d come down here to do it anyway so I might as well follow through. It had to happen if the money was to get passed onto you.”

Daniel took a step forward. “This isn’t a film you’re watching, Tony. Alec Guinness isn’t playing any of these parts. You killed real people with real lives for no good reason. For money Nick would have given you. For money I would have given you. You did it because you could. You need help.”

Tony half-laughed. “It’s ironic really. Melvin thinks I’m crazy. Mother thinks it too. You’re the only one who didn’t think I’d killed Nick. It never occurred to you for a minute, did it?” He turned to look at Daniel again.

Daniel closed his eyes. “No. It never occurred to me for a minute. I thought it was a burglar.” Everything he knew was wrong. He had seen splinters of good even in Tony but he’d never been looking at the situation the right way. All those little moments of remorse and furtive kindness had been actuated by guilt for wrongs so terrible they could never be excused; they could never even be explained.

“That’s why I needed you around. And that’s why I get mad when you act like I’m… I need you to see the good in me. I need someone who really knows me who thinks I’m redeemable.”

“Tony, you need to call an ambulance for the man you shot. You need to do something right while you still can.”

Tony walked back over to where he was standing and put the gun to Daniel’s head. “Do you still think I’m redeemable?”

Daniel looked into his eyes. “I think you need help.”

“I wasn’t redeemable from the first time I climbed into your bed, Daniel. You were twelve years old. Do you know what that makes me?”

“I was nearly thirteen. In some cultures… You were a teenager. You didn’t mean any harm.” Daniel closed his eyes. “Yes, okay, it was wrong. We were both wrong. I should have told someone. I should have made sure it didn’t keep happening.”

“Yes.” Tony gazed into his eyes. “You should. You’ve made me what I am. You did this to both of us. It’s your fault as much as mine that those people are dead. You should have stopped me. You could have saved Sha’re and Ivana. All you had to do was realize it was me. How could you not know it was me?”

Daniel felt the sick anger course through his veins in another chill flow. “You killed them too? Why? What part of your plan were they?”

“They witnessed the will you wrote where you left everything to me. I sent it to O’Mack. When you die I get everything. All legal and above board.”

“I’ve never made a will.”

“I did it for you. And Ivana and Sha’re witnessed it. Except they thought it was my will. I tricked them. Ivana believed me but Sha’re was suspicious. I probably would have killed her anyway before too long. I never liked the way she looked at me. Ivana was easy. She invited me in. She was flattered I drove all the way to see her when her boyfriend was in a bar. Of course I knew he was in a bar because I followed him to make sure he was out of the way. She died fast. She didn’t suffer much. Sha’re was harder. I had to follow her home. She tried to scream but I stopped her. I could have raped her, you know. I could have raped both of them. But I didn’t.”

Daniel stared at him in disbelief. “Do you expect praise?” He closed his eyes again, wanting to scream but knowing if he lost his temper there would be no hope for the man outside. “All you needed to do was ask me to sign over the money and I would have done. You could have had every damned nickel. I never wanted it. You need help. You need to call Melvin and tell him what you’ve just told me. He’ll certify that you’re not sane.”

“I have to follow through, Daniel.” Tony reached out and stroked his hair back from his face, the gun in his hand very cold against Daniel’s skin. “Otherwise it was all for nothing. If I don’t kill you there was no point in killing anyone. I have to finish what I started.”

***

The drive ran downhill from the road to the house, so O'Neill switched off the engine and coasted the last few hundred yards as silently as he could. Carter’s car was standing in front of the house, badly parked, and looking as if it had skidded to its current position. The driver door and passenger door were both open and the car appeared to be empty. O'Neill let his car slide in behind Carter’s so that it blocked him from the house. He wouldn’t put it past Tony to have an arsenal in there and if it came to a shootout he wanted something behind which he could take cover. With his gun drawn in readiness and keeping low, he slid out of his car and eased open the back door of Carter’s. That was when he saw the blood all over the cushions and the man lying on the floor.

“Jesus….”

He clambered gingerly onto the blood-soaked back seat and reached down to feel for a pulse in the wounded man’s neck. Teal’c’s eyes snapped open at once and he grabbed O'Neill’s wrist. “He took Jackson into the house.”

O'Neill spoke rapidly into his radio, summoning an ambulance and back-up as he checked Teal’c’s wound. A lot of blood loss. Touch and go if the guy was going to pull through. He shrugged off his jacket then pulled off his t-shirt, tearing it to make a pressure bandage which he applied swiftly. “How many guns has Tony got?”

“Mine and his. Maybe Carter’s too.”

As he pulled his jacket back on, even over the iron scent of spilled blood, he could smell sweat and semen, the same unmistakable bitter musk that had been scenting the air of Daniel’s bedroom before he’d ‘rescued’ him. Some rescue. He looked into Teal’c’s eyes and thought he saw residual anger and shock still there. The wounded man gritted his teeth. “Just get him away from that evil fuck.”

O'Neill put the radio into Teal’c’s bloody hand. “Consider it done.”

 

He ran for the front door in a zig-zag pattern, keeping low, even as he kept his gaze focused on his target, his body tensed for the bullet he was certain would be coming. When he reached the door, unscathed, he found it was ajar, swinging gently in the wind, a slight creak in the hinges. Peering cautiously around its weather-beaten edge, he saw a dark corridor stretching ahead of him, squares of pale pearly light leaving a distorted checkerboard pattern from each open door from each shutterless room. 

The faint sound of voices reached him and he slipped into the corridor, wincing at each creak from the old floorboards as he made his way as quietly as he could towards the sound.

“…still one life you could save. It isn’t too late for you to do some good.”

Daniel. Oh God. Daniel was alive. That almost undid him in a way the sight of the dying Teal’c and fear of a bullet in the head certainly hadn’t. That meant he could possibly save him and could possibly still lose him. 

“You don’t get it, do you?” Tony’s voice was harsh. “It was too late for me seventeen years ago.”

“That isn’t true.” Daniel’s voice was soothing. “You’ve done some terrible things, but you’re sick, Tony. You need help. You need a lot of help. And you can still save that man’s life. Just make the call.”

“You know I have to kill you, don’t you…?”

He passed the kitchen, a place he’d only seen in crime scene photographs before. The walls had been repainted, but it was all too easy to lay the shadow of the bloodstains over those same beech-fronted units, to see the splatter that had reached almost to the beamed ceiling. At least Tony hadn’t taken Daniel to this room. O'Neill had studied the layout of this place enough times to feel almost at home here and he knew that the dim passageway led to the dining room and the living room. The bloodstained Nike prints had led down this corridor to the back door, which had been left open, the footprint trail leading to the small creek behind the house where the murderer must have washed away the blood. It was possible he’d walked away from washing away the evidence naked, changed in his own vehicle, then burned or buried every piece of clothing later. No gas station had reported anyone stopping to use their facilities although the police investigating had diligently searched the garbage of each one in case the clothes had been dumped there. But whoever he was he hadn’t stopped for gas, hadn’t stopped to clean up further, hadn’t blinked about disposing of a three hundred dollar pair of trainers. Hadn’t taken anything from the house he had supposedly been robbing.

He knew it was Tony, of course. Knew it now, although he didn’t blame the investigating officers for not realizing it before, how many murders were committed by family members who gained nothing in the will, weren’t the recipient of life insurance, had never had a quarrel with the deceased? 

O'Neill looked at the distance between the place where he was and the pale oblong of light which was the open doorway to the room in which Tony and Daniel were talking. He couldn’t get there without alerting Tony on this wooden floor. Swiftly, he slipped his feet out of his shoes and began to move swiftly and silently towards the light.

There was resignation in Daniel’s voice, as if he was too tired to care. “I know you think you do.”

“I’ve been planning this since I was seventeen! What was the point of any of it if I don’t see it through?”

“There was no point to any of it, Tony. You’re just…ill. You’re very ill and you need help. That man out there has nothing to do with any of this. He has nothing to do with me or the money. It isn’t going to affect your plan to call him an ambulance.”

O'Neill inched along the wall, wishing vainly for a spy mirror, a balaclava and a silencer. He was going in as an assassin instead of a policeman and he didn’t even care. He wanted to take Tony out with one perfectly placed headshot and then get Daniel out of there and if Daniel could never forgive him, so be it. At least he’d be alive.

He risked a look past the hinge of the open door. Tony was standing with his back to the window. The shutters had been pulled back and a sniper outside could have killed him with one bullet, but he didn’t think backup was going to get here in time. Daniel was between Tony and the door, bad positioning on Tony’s part. O'Neill could see Daniel’s reflection in the mirror over the fireplace and his condition smothered any last compunction O'Neill might have had about shooting Tony Ballard-Green to kill. His glasses were gone. There was a bruise on his jaw and a cut across his mouth, bite marks on his neck. His torso was bare, arms tied behind his back and finger shaped bruises already coming out on his upper arms, his hair was disordered, his jeans were unbuttoned and he looked as if he was still in shock. If his hands were loose he would have been fumbling for his pills.

“Please, Tony.” Daniel slumped in defeat and O'Neill knew the man had raped him. It was in the tremors and the pallor, someone operating on automatic when some part of his soul had been damaged. “Call an ambulance. It’s your last chance to do some good.”

Looking at Daniel’s reflection, O'Neill wondered how Tony could resist the pleading expression in those blue eyes.

“I have to kill you.” Tony held the gun up to his face as if he needed to feel its coolness against his skin. He was gazing at Daniel with something like love, regret, certainly, and true grief. O'Neill’s heartbeat increased a fraction as he realized Tony really didn’t want to do this. Daniel was the last fence Tony had to clear before he won that imaginary prize, the last task which needed to be completed to justify the other deaths, and he didn’t want to do it. Tony closed his eyes. “There was no point to any of it unless I kill you.”

“Call an ambulance!” Daniel’s wrists were bruising against their bonds as he tugged at them in frustration. O'Neill could see the sweat darkening the belt, the buckle biting into the skin. “Tony, you can save a life. You’ve already killed three innocent people. Don’t make it four.”

“You don’t even care if I kill you or not, do you?” Tony looked at him sadly. “It’s like I told O'Neill, there’s no way back for either of us. We’re damaged goods.”

“There’s a way back for everyone.” The passion in Daniel’s voice took O'Neill by surprise. He glanced at the mirror and saw the sincerity there, Daniel leaning forward to make his point. “You don’t have to believe in a god to believe in redemption.”

“I have to finish it.” Tony began to walk towards Daniel, gun aimed at his head. “There’s only one way this can end.”

O'Neill stepped around the door and pointed his own gun unwaveringly at Tony. “Not that way.”

Daniel said quietly, “Don’t.” 

Not ‘Jack!’. Not ‘Thank God!’. Just ‘Don’t’. Daniel couldn’t even see his face but he still knew how much O'Neill wanted to pull the trigger, was not just ready, willing, and able to pull that trigger – ached to pull it, wanted to see the bullet go into Tony’s diseased brain and blow out the back of his head. 

Tony kept the gun pointing at Daniel, but his gaze was now fixed on O'Neill, expression one O'Neill couldn’t quite decipher.

“Daniel…?” O'Neill ground out the name through gritted teeth, because a second ago his mind had been clear as an axe blade and now there was doubt. You couldn’t have doubt where you had guns, you had to know what your target was and whether or not you were willing to pull the trigger, and if you weren’t willing to pull the trigger, don’t even pick it up because it could kill you just as easily if you couldn’t follow through.

Still looking at Tony but talking to O'Neill, Daniel continued evenly, “He’s already in most of my nightmares, Jack. Trust me, you don’t need him in yours. Tony, put the gun down. Let Jack arrest you. Don’t make him kill you.”

Tony was still looking at O'Neill and the man finally identified his expression. Relief. “You’re late,” Tony observed coolly. 

“Put the gun down.” O'Neill told him flatly. 

Tony shook his head. “It can’t end that way, O'Neill. We both know that.”

Bad positioning. Daniel still in the line of fire and O'Neill had already learned during their time together in Cheyenne Mountain that he had the self-preservation of a lemming and the reaction time of a stalled Sherman tank. If he told him to hit the floor, Daniel would still be saying ‘What?’ when Tony was blowing his head off. 

O'Neill raised the gun so it was pointing directly between Tony’s eyes. Screw the three perfectly placed bullets around the heart. “I’m going to count to three and if you haven’t put the gun down I’m going to kill you.” He didn’t even try to make it sound as if he wouldn’t enjoy it.

“Tony, put the gun down…” Daniel looked up at the man, body language one twist of pleading. 

Tony shook his head and moved the gun from pointing at Daniel’s head to pointing at O'Neill’s. “Prison wouldn’t agree with me.”

“There’s always hell.” O'Neill met his gaze unblinkingly. “One.”

“I have some old friends there.”

“Two.”

“Tony, please…” Daniel took a step forward. “You’re the only family I have left.”

For the first time Tony looked back at Daniel. “We were never family.”

As O'Neill opened his mouth to say ‘three’. Tony abruptly put the gun to his own temple. You never took your eye off an armed suspect, you absolutely never did that. Except he did. As Daniel was still screaming ‘No!’ O'Neill dived for Daniel, twisting him round so he wouldn’t see it, even as the room exploded into the roar of gunshot and that deceptively soft misting of blood and brains. O'Neill looked up at the mirror and there was the red spray across the glass between himself and his reflection. Daniel was still shouting “No…!” as he hauled him up, still keeping his head pulled in tight against his chest, and manhandled him out of the room.

Only once they were in the corridor, did he let Daniel tear himself loose and then he spread out his arms to stop him entering the room again.

Daniel was wild-eyed and tried to push past him but O'Neill gently held him back, aware of how rough his fingers must feel against Daniel’s bare skin.

“He may still be…”

“He’s dead, Daniel.” He couldn’t hide the compassion in his eyes.

“Are you sure? Did you…?”

“He’s dead. I’m sorry.” For you, not that he’s dead. But he couldn’t say that aloud. O'Neill gently squeezed his upper arms. “He did the right thing.”

“No! He should have…!”

O'Neill reached up and held Daniel’s head in his hands, making him look into his eyes and read the truth of what he was saying. “He did the right thing. For the first time in his life. He let you go. At least this way he got to be the one to make the choice.” In truth his only choice had been death because O'Neill had crossed a line when he entered that house that meant he was going to have to hand in his badge. He had never had any intention of Tony walking out of this house alive. The only question had been whether he or Tony were the ones to pull the trigger on the bullet that claimed Tony Ballard-Green’s life. In the end Tony had made it easy on him for Daniel’s sake, and perhaps to keep some power over the situation, or at least the illusion of it. But that didn’t change the fact that O'Neill had been intending to assassinate him from the time he left Gray Gables in pursuit. Quietly he said again, “He let you go. You have to do the same.”

Daniel’s face crumpled. As he swayed, O'Neill put his arms around him and as Daniel collapsed, lowered them both gently to the ground. He put a hand in Daniel’s hair, and with the other gently rubbed the bare skin of his back while Daniel sobbed against him. He was still crying as O'Neill heard the unmistakable wail of the ambulance siren, the blaring alarm call of the police cars, then the clatter of booted feet, the abrupt halt as they saw O'Neill with Daniel crying into his neck and O'Neill holding aloft his police badge. He jerked his head at the open door.

“One gunman. Deceased.” 

He nuzzled Daniel’s head gently, not caring that these were cops from a different precinct and they could all see him. Over Daniel’s head he mouthed to cops milling around him: Cover the body. One nodded in comprehension and disappeared, presumably in search of a sheet.

“I can’t…” Daniel breathed and O'Neill knew what he meant, that there was nothing left, no more reserves of strength, not to deal with Tony being the person who’d killed his grandfather and the two women, not to deal with the fact that Tony had been planning to kill him, not to deal with whatever Tony had done to him in the car, and certainly not to deal with him blowing his brains out in front of him. Expect there would be, strength was like skin and it renewed itself, even when it felt seared from the bones by life.

“Yes, you can.” He tightened his grip on his hair, pulling him in close and safe against his chest and rocking him to comfort them both, still not caring that people were watching whose names he didn’t even know, one of them waiting patiently to get some kind of rational report from him of what had taken place. “And you will, Daniel. I promise, you will.”

***

It was as he walked in from the yard through the French windows to the long living room that O'Neill realized he was already thinking of this rental house as ‘home’. Looking around the room as if he were seeing it for the first time he noticed how much he’d unpacked. More than he’d taken out of packing cases in months spent in his rented apartment in Chicago. He still found it strange the same USAF who had made life so difficult for him in the past had suddenly begun to make life so easy for him. Hammond seemed to have spoken to everyone from O'Neill’s divisional captain to the Chief of Police to ask if O'Neill’s retirement from the force could be expedited as the USAF had urgent need of his assistance. With astonishing swiftness he had found that his official job had changed from Detective in the homicide division to…well, he didn’t know what he was. Daniel’s babysitter, he supposed. The end of the month was approaching fast and Daniel had to be well enough to come up with the solution to the Stargate problem by then, and it was obvious that wasn’t going to happen without a lot of care from someone. The only possible someone was O'Neill. That hadn’t been discussed by anyone. 

O'Neill had gone with him to the hospital and stayed with Daniel while he was checked over for injuries, giving his report to the patient detective from the other division as he did so. Daniel had been slumped on the hospital bed, not making eye contact with anyone, head bowed, utterly defeated-looking. O'Neill really was going to send that detective, Davis, or whatever his name was, a bottle of something, because the guy couldn’t have been nicer to Daniel. He’d extracted the necessary information from him with the maximum of tact and the minimum of fuss and although Daniel had answered in a dull monotone, fingers constantly twisting and untwisting the sheet, he hadn’t been further traumatized by it. He didn’t seem to care that much that Tony had raped him in the car or had been intending to put a bullet in his head. It was the fact that Tony had killed his grandfather which had sent his mind reeling, that and the fact that Tony was irrevocably dead. 

The only time he’d shown any animation was when asking about Carter and Teal’c. His relief at hearing that Carter was only concussed and should be fine apart from a headache when she came around had been obvious, and he had anxiously asked for updates as Teal’c was rushed into surgery. Teal’c had apparently gone under the anesthetic trying to give his report and had woken up still talking. One of the doctors who’d performed the surgery had observed that oxen could only wish they had a constitution like his. He was now recovering well.

Daniel had been kept in for observation, which had given the military machine time to go into action and work out what was to be done with him next, for Hammond had taken responsibility for Daniel and ensured that the USAF did the same. Neither Zinnia nor Melvin Green had visited him but McKenzie had flown in on the same plane as Hammond to see how he was. Daniel hadn’t seemed to say much to him and as far as O'Neill could see all McKenzie had done was look at his charts and murmur to the other doctors but he’d got Daniel transferred to his care and then promptly passed him over to O'Neill to look after. 

After a two minute conversation with Hammond in which O'Neill mentioned that he would be quitting the Police Force and had no idea what he would be doing after that, Hammond had started making phonecalls. When he’d come back, he had spoken as if he assumed that O'Neill would be taking Daniel home with him and told the man that he had his daughter out looking for a rental property in the Cheyenne Mountain area for O'Neill to move into. No one thought it was a good idea for Daniel to stay in Chicago, O'Neill included, but even he was a little taken aback by how fast things were moving. 

O'Neill had briefly glimpsed a colonel in USAF uniform going into Teal’c’s room and then coming out about half an hour later looking seriously pissed. The colonel and Hammond had clearly recognized one another and he got the impression there was no love lost there. Hammond had also gone into Teal’c’s room and come out looking what in a lesser man O'Neill would have classified as smug. 

There had been a lot of confusion and noise and questions and statements and medical reports and military protocols being bent all around him and in the middle had been Daniel sitting in his hospital bed, twisting his sheet between his fingers and saying as little as possible. He had been kept in for observation for forty-eight hours – or for the time it took for Hammond’s clearly very capable daughter to find a house to which he could be moved under O'Neill’s supervision. And then they had all been piled onto an USAF jet, O'Neill’s not yet unpacked belongings collected and installed with a smoothness that was almost frightening. Everything in Daniel’s room, including his PC, had also been packed up and removed. Apparently Zinnia had come out into the hallway to watch the men take the things away before retiring to her room again. She hadn’t asked after Daniel. O'Neill presumed she blamed him or blamed herself for the death of her son and the events that had led to it. Either way he doubted Daniel would be hearing from her again and that would be a sorrow to Daniel and perhaps also to Zinnia, but perhaps some business was just destined to remain perennially unfinished.

He and Daniel had been installed into the rental house less than a week earlier and already he was used to it. Solid wood and big chunks of quarried stone. A house whose walls you could hit and which didn’t even notice the impact. It stood in a good-sized yard, lawns and trees set into the foot of the mountains with the trees climbing up just like the forests back home, very different from the two-story home he’d shared with Sara yet still in its own way somewhere he recognized. 

The house had the feel of a log cabin about it but none of the inconveniences. As he’d stepped across the threshold he’d found himself thinking that his own sisters couldn’t have chosen better for him than Hammond’s daughter had done. He already knew where everything was. Didn’t open the wrong doors or turn the wrong way when leaving a room. Although only one story tall it felt higher because of the steps up to the roof. The telescope had been left by the previous owner apparently but seeing it O'Neill had immediately been reminded of those times he’d tried to teach Charlie a little basic astronomy, the two of them trying to identify constellations together that usually looked nothing like the drawings in the book, while having fun making up their own. The Baseball Pitcher, had been one of theirs. The Skunk another. He’d gone up onto the roof the first night they’d arrived, while Daniel, still silent and frighteningly subdued, had said he was going to bed. Alone up there with the stars O'Neill had thought how much Charlie would have liked this place, and along with the loss he’d had the first glimmerings of a feeling of peace. Not that the raw ache wasn’t still there but for the first time he could believe in a future where his life wasn’t just about loss, where the fact his son was dead wasn’t necessarily the first thing he thought about in the mornings, wasn’t the last image in his mind before he fell asleep. 

O'Neill suspected that while Daniel’s vital importance to the Stargate project provided Hammond with an excuse to get the USAF government taking such an active role in his rehabilitation, it wasn’t the real reason. The real reason, he believed, was that Hammond was a good man who cared about Daniel and wanted to make sure he was well taken care of. And Daniel certainly needed someone to take care of him right now. 

For the first few days it was like dealing with a robot and O'Neill didn’t know whether to scream or cry. He wondered if this was what Daniel had been like in the psychiatric hospital: very quiet, very unhappy, very passive. When O'Neill suggested that perhaps he should get up now, he got up, cleaned his teeth, showered himself, got dressed, came into the dining room, ate a few bites of whatever food O'Neill put in front of him, drank his coffee, and then sat on the couch in the living room, not really reading whatever book O'Neill put temptingly close to him, or not really watching whatever channel on the TV O'Neill selected. 

When O'Neill had pins and needles in his brain just from watching him be so dull-eyed and broken-spirited, and suggested they went for a brisk walk, Daniel would silently get up and pull on his walking boots, put on the jacket O'Neill would hand him as protection against the crisp mountain air, and then follow O'Neill wherever the man happened to go. If O'Neill asked him if he was tired or hot or cold he would say ‘a little’, if he asked him if he wanted to go back home he would say ‘I don’t mind’. But despite the glories of the landscape around them, Daniel only trudged along behind him with his head bowed, lost in the dark place inside his mind where everyone was dead and everything was presumably his fault. Wherever his mind was it certainly wasn’t in the here and now. O'Neill had been half tempted a few times to go to the nearest bar just to see if Daniel noticed he’d gone, but he couldn’t bear the thought of him panicking at being left by himself or some catastrophic wave of misery hitting him while O'Neill wasn’t around to keep an eye on him, so he stayed and counted to ten a lot. 

He made him do normal things, like coming to the nearest supermarket and buying supplies, asking Daniel if he wanted to drive as if he seriously thought Daniel was capable of driving right now, and Daniel seemed to consider the question before shaking his head. He determinedly asked him about each item they put in their shopping cart, positively demanding that Daniel engaged with the knotty problem of which brand of toilet roll they bought. After the third or fourth visit, Daniel had reluctantly interacted with their groceries a little and O'Neill had taken that as a step forward, albeit a small one.

Determined to build on this progress he found a specialist shop that sold imported coffee beans, and other accoutrements for the coffee connoisseur. O'Neill immediately bought a nifty new grinder that was twice as good as the one they already had and only cost six times as much and then looked around to see how best he could get Daniel involved in some more purchases. As far as he’d been able to tell when they were in Cheyenne Mountain Daniel’s relationship with caffeine was to get it into his system as fast as possible and as frequently as possible on a ‘never mind the quality, feel the kick’ principle, if it could have been jammed straight into his body on an intravenous drip it would probably have done as well, but for the purposes of Daniel’s rehabilitation, O'Neill determinedly made him engage with coffee beans. He demanded that he test drank little cups of the stuff, and smelled each handful and made a selection, and did finally get the first glimmerings of a close-to-normal reaction. 

By a stroke of luck the usual assistant was out of the store and the guy left in charge only really spoke Spanish. Unable not to help two people to communicate who were obviously struggling, Daniel acted as an interpreter and so was forced to have a proper conversation with another human being. Almost ready to punch the air in triumph, O'Neill asked long complicated questions about where the beans came from, how they were harvested, what exactly was the process by which green beans were roasted anyway? Daniel obligingly translated and O'Neill asked about the conditions of the local workers, which had thankfully led to a long explanation of how this chain of specialist coffee shops took their responsibilities to the indigenous population very seriously and had leaflets to prove it. It was the kind of conversation he would usually have been trying to stop Daniel having so he could buy a half a pound of beans and get back to the game, but today he positively embraced role reversal. He asked about the history of every kind of beans in the store. Where did they come from? Which ones did the worker recommend? What about Turkish coffee? Were the beans really from Turkey? What was the optimum growing conditions for a coffee harvest anyway? What caused different beans to have different flavors? 

The guy behind the counter was luckily a coffee fanatic who knew the history of every bean in the place and was eager to share his enthusiasm for individual blends. O'Neill bought fifteen different kinds of very expensive imported coffee out of sheer gratitude and got his reward as they were leaving the store when Daniel said, “I wonder if they sell those cookies? The coffee walnut ones?”

By the end of the conversation about which cookie went best with which blend, Daniel had actually smiled twice, and it needed three trips to the car to load up everything they’d bought. O'Neill barely resisted the urge to throw his arms around the wonderfully knowledgeable Juan-Manuel’s neck and hug him, but he hoped his ‘thank you’ as they left was suitably fervent. 

Back in the car, Daniel looked at O'Neill as if seeing him for the first time. “I didn’t realize you were such a coffee enthusiast, Jack.”

O'Neill shrugged. “I’m always willing to try something new. Shall we get a pizza on the way home?”

“Okay.” Daniel looked out of the window on the way back and seemed to notice that they weren’t in Chicago any more. “The mountains are beautiful,” he offered as they drove towards the pizza place. The sun was setting and the mountains were wreathed in clouds, their tips seeming to be floating above a sea mist, coppery islands in the sky.

“Yes, and the air’s much cleaner here too. Have you noticed?” O'Neill inhaled dramatically. “It’s not quite as good as Minnesota air but it’s close.”

Daniel did make an effort to help choose the topping for the pizza and only flinched a little from the noise and brightness of the place, but O'Neill took care to get him out of there and back into the car as soon as possible. 

He drove to a view point where they could watch the sun go down as they ate their pizza and talked casually about Carter being back at Cheyenne Mountain now and Hammond’s eldest granddaughter being about to start Grade School. 

“General Hammond has grandchildren?” Daniel smiled at the thought and O'Neill thought how young he looked when he smiled and how oddly untouched by the darkness of life he still seemed at times like this.

“Two.” O'Neill handed him another triangle of pizza. “Both girls. His wife died of cancer a few years ago.”

Daniel took the pizza from him. “Poor General Hammond.” After a pause, he said, “Teal’c has a son. He’s five. I had a letter from him.”

“He’s writing letters at five?”

Almost a glimmer of a smile. “From Teal’c. From the hospital. He seems annoyed they won’t let him out yet. I think ‘Intensive Care unit’ means something different to him from what it means to the rest of us.”

“That’s Special Ops for you.” O'Neill shrugged. “They’re not wired up right in the head.”

Daniel darted him a sideways look that was at once surprised and affectionate. “They seem pretty sane to me. He says he’s left Special Ops anyway. He’s got a new assignment as soon as he’s well. He says he’s looking forward to it.”

They ate the rest of the pizza while O'Neill tried not to look too relieved at the progress they’d made and those glimmerings of normality finally returning to the man beside him. With studied casualness he said, “I was thinking I might buy the house. What do you think?”

Daniel had clearly been distracted by the mention of Carter and Hammond, and O'Neill hoped he was remembering that big stone ring again and the number of people who were dependent on him. He didn’t want him feeling pressured but he did want him thinking about something other than the fact his stepbrother had been a psychopath and that every time he’d touched Daniel for the past five years he’d had Nicholas Ballard’s blood on his hands. Daniel looked at him in confusion. “What house?”

“The house we’re living in.” 

“I thought it was rented?”

“There’s an option to buy. I like it. You?”

“What?”

“Do you like the house?”

Daniel looked more confused. “Yes.” But he didn’t sound too sure and when they drove back as dusk was darkening into night, O'Neill noticed that he looked around the house as if he was seeing it for the first time. As O'Neill pretended to be busy in the kitchen while keeping a covert eye on him, Daniel went from room to room, peering at electrical outlets and opening closet doors. When he came back after about ten minutes, he looked thoughtful.

“Wood exterior walls are high maintenance. Have you checked the septic tank? When was the house rewired? What about termites? Was the soil treated before the foundations went down?”

O'Neill looked at him in delighted disbelief, wrestling his happiness from his face only with a focused effort. “There are certificates for the woodwork. There seem enough electrical outlets to me. I like it. Do you?”

Daniel looked around at the long sitting room. “It’s a very nice house.” He sounded a little wistful. “Can you afford it?”

O'Neill nodded. “Sure.” Special Operations paid well and after buying the family house in which Sara still lived, O'Neill had put most of his money into Charlie’s fund. There had been a separate insurance policy for his college fees, a much larger amount than the usual hundred thousand, in case he turned out to be a genius and wanted to do a PhD, and then there had been all the money O'Neill had put to one side in case anything happened to them. Neither of them had ever thought they might outlive him. It had been a horrible shock to get the check from the insurance company but he’d made Sara keep it. Just in case, he’d said, although he couldn’t have said for what. She’d kept the house at his insistence but absolutely refused to take the money from Charlie’s fund. She’d never paid a cent into it, she pointed out, and she already had the house, the alimony he was insisting on paying her, which she didn’t want or need, as she would rather lose herself in a job and pay her own way, and then there was the money from the insurance company. The money in the fund was his, she said. He had been shocked at how much he’d put away in the decade since his son’s birth, appalled to find himself comparatively wealthy and with no one left to spend it on.

O’Mack was still trying to make sense of Daniel’s financial affairs. They were basically a mess and had been simplified by Daniel signing over everything that it was presumed Melvin and Tony had already stolen from him to Zinnia so no one could be prosecuted. He’d done that in the hospital. Sending for O’Mack and demanding that the man drew up the paperwork. Everyone had seen it as some kind of neurotic desire to expiate for whatever crime he thought he’d committed against Zinnia by allowing her son to abuse him for seventeen years, but no one had quite had the heart to dissuade him either. He hadn’t seemed any happier after it was done, but he had at least stopped agonizing over that aspect of events. Not trusting Melvin’s access to Daniel’s bank account, O’Mack had set up a different set of accounts for him into which he was paying him the interest from his surviving trust fund. He certainly wasn’t a millionaire any more, but he had enough to get by, although, ironically, probably slightly less a month coming in than O'Neill had gained by the tragic death of his son.

“Do you think you could be happy here?” Daniel looked across at the photograph of O'Neill with Sara and Charlie on the mantelpiece as if he was seeing it for the first time. He looked so sad for other people’s losses, so grave and serious and sympathetic that it made O'Neill’s heart feel as if something was squeezing it. 

“I think I could try to be.” O'Neill chose his words carefully. “Ultimately, I think it is a choice. You can remember all the bad things or you can try and concentrate on the good ones. I can’t believe in God or heaven but I can believe in…something more than this. That the dead aren’t just…gone, they’re just existing in a different way now. Maybe it really is an awfully big adventure, like the Peter Pan guy said.”

There was a long pause before Daniel said quietly, “I think Nick would look at it like that. An altered state that he could explore.”

“Come up on the roof.” O'Neill fetched them both a beer and nodded to the side door. There were wooden stairs leading up to a pleasant decked area on the roof with a few tubs of flowers left behind by the previous owner who had also left that telescope.

“Oh…” Daniel brightened at the sight of it, the first real glimmer of curiosity O'Neill had seen on his face in much too long. “Is it yours?”

“If I buy the house it will be.”

“Don’t you have to go back to Chicago?” Daniel looked through the lens of the telescope, twiddling with the focus to adjust it to his different vision.

O'Neill sighed. “I quit the police force.”

“You did?” Daniel looked up at him in shock. “When?”

“I told you four days ago.”

“You did?” Daniel blinked in confusion and then gave the man an apologetic grimace. “I’m sorry. I haven’t been the best company in the world for the past few days.”

O'Neill opened the beer and handed it to him. “Don’t worry about it.” He leaned across to adjust the scope for him. “You have to turn it like that… okay, you’ve got it.” He sat back on the decking and sipped his beer. “If we come up here at dusk tomorrow I can show you Venus.”

Daniel smiled over his shoulder at him. “Is that an indecent proposal?”

O'Neill half-smiled in return. “No. It’s purely astrophysical, I promise.” After a pause, he said in an altered voice, “Would you rather that it was…an indecent proposal, I mean?”

The telescope was a good way to avoid conversations. O'Neill had used it often enough himself when Sara wanted to talk and he didn’t know how to respond. So he didn’t blame Daniel for choosing to gaze intently at the starry night sky rather than come up with an answer. It was an odd situation they found themselves in. Everyone else seemed to assume their relationship was some kind of fait accompli, but the truth was they barely had a friendship yet. The house had two bedrooms with a double bed in each one and O'Neill had the master bedroom with the ensuite shower and Daniel had the smaller bedroom with the pretty view of the sun shining through the mountains in the morning. On their current trajectory, it was difficult to envisage that situation changing any time soon.

Still gazing into the lens, Daniel said, “I don’t know, I suppose I…” And then his body went rigid and O'Neill knew that in that moment he had just ceased to exist. 

“What is it?” he demanded, getting to his feet. “Daniel…?” Tentatively he put a hand on his shoulder, still half afraid that he might flinch.

Daniel looked over his shoulder at him, mouth open, eyes wide with disbelief. “I know what the symbols in the cartouche are. Except there should be seven and there are only six…”

And then he was gone, skittering down the stairs much too fast, beer bottle still held in his hand and sloshing its contents carelessly on the beech wood that O'Neill had now definitely made up his mind to buy. Hurrying after him, O'Neill called: “Well, are they numbers or words or planets?”

Pausing briefly at the foot of the steps to give him a dazzling smile, Daniel said, “They’re what they always had to be for it to make any kind of sense.” And then he dived into the living room and was already pulling open boxes to look for whatever he was searching for before O'Neill had locked the front door behind them both.

He wanted to grin like an idiot as Daniel pulled out folders and tossed them onto the coffee table before grabbing armfuls of books and dumping them unceremoniously on his couch. 

“I take it you’re going to want coffee?” He did a pretty good sigh of resignation.

“Yes.” Daniel looked around the room as if seeing it for the first time. “Do you have any books on astronomy?”

O'Neill raised his eyebrows. “Do I look like a man who has books on astronomy?”

Daniel looked him up and down. “Yes.”

Sighing again, O'Neill put his hand into one of his few remaining unpacked cases and pulled out his Great Atlas of the Stars. “This covers the northern hemisphere.” 

“Thanks.” 

Daniel had photographs of the Stargate symbols spread out on the coffee table and the couch now. He opened the book O'Neill had given him and then began hunting around for a pen. O'Neill found him one and handed it to him. When Daniel reached out again as if for something else, O'Neill said, “What?”

Daniel looked up at him in surprise. “I thought you made coffee?”

“I’ll just go and make it now.” Shaking his head, O'Neill went into the kitchen and switched on the Mister Coffee. He had a suspicion as he did so that the big-eyed hero worship with which Daniel had originally regarded him might have been a result of Daniel’s strange upbringing and history of abuse, that the real Daniel might be the one in the living room right now, scribbling rapidly on pieces of paper while murmuring under his breath, a guy for whom O'Neill had effectively ceased to exist except as a means to obtain a caffeine kick without moving. 

O'Neill decided he could probably learn to live with that.

***

General George Hammond looked around the long room in which the chairs were set ready for Doctor Jackson’s presentation and realized he was as nervous as if it were his daughter preparing to present her findings. 

As a young officer, he’d had a strange experience apparently involving time travel and echoes of the future visiting him in his present and their past. A possible future anyway. That was how he’d always regarded it, not as a certainty, not some life he was bound to inherit, just a fork in the road that if he was vigilant he may be lucky enough to recognize at the right time. The first intimations that the future might be unfolding as predicted had come when he’d met Jacob Carter, a brave, compassionate, intelligent, but also impatient and uncommunicative fellow officer. For some reason they’d bonded at once and it had been only a mild shock to learn Carter had a daughter who was already taking a keen interest in math and astronomy and who apparently wanted to be an astronaut. At once Hammond had remembered the female captain with the cut on her hand. One down, three to go. He’d started to make enquiries about the stone ring but had been stonewalled by the Pentagon. Nevertheless, he was good enough at reading between the lines to know it must exist. He just wasn’t yet high enough ranked to be trusted with any information about it.

By the time he’d come across O'Neill’s file, the man had already left the Air Force to pursue a career as a Homicide detective. That was a definite blip in the plan. Perhaps someone else had taken a different fork in the road and that future was denied to all of them now. Still, he looked up Teal’c and found the man was in Special Operations. A very intelligent, headstrong, impatient maverick who specialized in under cover work in Africa and the Middle East, multi-lingual and multi-decorated but not the easiest man to get along with. Of Doctor Daniel Jackson there had been no record in the USAF until 1990 when he and Sarah Gardner had excavated a tomb whose contents had matched some of those found near the ring. 

West’s departure from the program had given Hammond the chance to finally see the stone artifact for himself. He had encouraged Carter to contact Jackson and waited to see what happened next. When the young man had arrived in the company of O'Neill, Hammond had seen the pieces begin to fall into place. It had been difficult not to treat O'Neill like someone he had already met, and their connection had been instantaneous. His own daughter was very precious to him and it had affected him equally to think of O'Neill robbed of his child and Jackson robbed of his childhood. 

When he had discovered that Teal’c had been assigned to the task of keeping Jackson under observation in Chicago by Harry Maybourne of the always unlikable NID, it had felt like another cog in the clockwork wheel of that possible future moving into alignment. And he wanted that future now. He was excited by the possibilities of what that ring could represent, the proof that they weren’t alone in the universe, that there really were still new worlds to visit, new technologies to be found, perhaps medicine that wouldn’t have been developed on Earth for centuries. The Stargate represented the Great Unknown that surely anyone who remembered what it was to have been a child secretly yearned to explore?

But it all depended on Doctor Jackson and his uncanny gifts, and given his recent experiences, was it really possible for him to overcome the terrible pounding his already fragile psyche must have taken enough to solve a problem the brightest and the best of the United States Air Force had labored over in vain for two years?

As the room began to fill up with cynical men from the Pentagon, each one knowing to the cent how much money this project had cost so far, Hammond could only hope that Doctor Jackson would be able to fulfill the claim he had made to be able to answer the questions that would get the Stargate Program greenlit at last.

Captain Carter had recovered from her concussion although he suspected she was still getting headaches. Or perhaps that was just the tension of thinking the Stargate might be about to slip through her fingers as the end of the month approached with all the subtlety of an oncoming train. She was sitting next to Doctor McKay now, both of them nervous and subdued. McKay had been gravely shaken by Carter’s concussion and had insisted on traveling to Chicago to sit by her bedside, much to her annoyance, as she felt he should have been concentrating on his calculations. She had blamed herself for Doctor Jackson’s kidnapping and was still at that stage in her recovery where she kept running the same events over and over in her mind, picking out every mistake she’d made and why she shouldn’t have made it. Hammond hoped that Doctor Jackson’s appearance today might make her feel a little better. Certainly, his obviously traumatized condition in the hospital had done nothing to alleviate anyone’s guilt.

The officials from the Pentagon were just starting to get restless when the door opened and O'Neill and Doctor Jackson came in. O'Neill was in uniform, back ramrod straight, the perfect officer. At a gesture from Hammond, he guided Doctor Jackson to the chair put ready for him, briefly touching his shoulder in encouragement before taking a seat next to him.

Hammond directed a searching look at Jackson and saw that although he had clearly been dressed with some care – presumably by O'Neill as these clothes actually fitted him – he still had a slightly rumpled appearance that contrasted with the starched appearance of those around him. He looked a little on the pale side and there were shadows under his eyes but according to O'Neill’s report they were the kind caused only by squinting excitably at constellations until the ‘wee small hours’.

Jackson looked up and seeing Carter across the table gave her a beaming smile. “Sam. How’s your head?”

“Fine, Daniel. How are you?” Her expression was so tender that Hammond saw at least one official from the Pentagon leaping to entirely the wrong conclusion.

“Fine.” 

She couldn’t conceal her tension. “Have you really solved it?”

“Yes, I think so.” Jackson looked around the table and frowned. “I was thinking it would just be a few of us.”

Hammond made the introductions quietly, watching Jackson all the while to see if he could cope with being in a room with so many strangers. Jackson nodded to people with vague politeness but was clearly not taking in their names. 

It was McKay who said, “Well, tell us then…? Are they numbers or planets?”

Jackson gave him an absent smile. “Neither.” He spread out a piece of paper on the table and weighed it with books, then began to sketch with a marker pen. “They’re constellations. The reason we didn’t recognize them as such was because only a few of them are visible from our solar system. But once you see that this one is Orion, then the others kind of fall into place. The ‘gate uses a system of star constellations to map a destination point.” Jackson looked up from sketching symbols that were now also recognizably star patterns, not at Hammond but at the man with the most medals from the Pentagon. General Weaver. In the same way he would presumably have recognized a tribal leader by his head dress, Jackson was an astute enough anthropologist, despite his lack of interest in military protocol, to work out that this was the person who had to be convinced that the program was viable.

Hammond was relieved to see that Jackson’s hand barely trembled as he turned around the paperwork.

“You need to know how it works and why it works, right? Well, there are thirty-nine symbols around the edge of the ‘gate and nine chevrons that can potentially lock into place. I don’t know why there are nine instead of seven but it could have something to do with the solar flares Sam’s been looking at. It may be possible to use the ‘gate for time travel and the eighth and ninth chevrons could be something to do with time or they could be something to do with different galaxies or even dimensions. That’s someone else’s department. What I can tell you is that the seven chevrons have to lock onto seven of the symbols on the edge of the Stargate to establish a –” He looked at Carter. “What do you call it? The swirly thing?”

“Wormhole,” she put in.

“Lock into place to make a wormhole form between two fixed points in space. One of which is our Stargate and the other of which will be another Stargate.”

“We know this.” There was an impatient stirring amongst the men from the Pentagon that made Hammond hope that Jackson really did know what he was talking about.

“Yes, but you didn’t know why. Now, you do. Originally there would have been some kind of dialing device that went with the Stargate with the same symbols on it and some kind of…send button. If you want to travel from one place to another you have to have a Stargate address for the place you’re going to and you have to know how to get back.”

“And do you?” 

“We have this address.” Daniel pushed forward the photograph of the cartouche upon the cover stones. “And from that we can deduce what the symbol is for this Stargate ‘address’.”

Everyone looked at the cartouche symbols as if they had never seen them before. It was McKay who said with an edge of desperation in his voice, “I’m only seeing six symbols.”

“Oh.” Jackson leaned across with the marker in his hand and drew a circle around the carving underneath the cartouche. “That’s the seventh symbol. I think it’s the symbol for Earth. It’s not in the cartouche because it’s not part of the ‘gate address as such even though it happens to be our point of origin and so will be the seventh symbol for anywhere we visited. If you were on a completely different planet and trying to reach the place in that cartouche you’d have to use a different seventh symbol because you’d have a different point of origin. Does that make sense to everyone?”

“Yes,” Carter said faintly. She looked up at him with something very close to wonder in her eyes. “You found the symbol for here.”

He gave her a slightly nervous smile. “Yes. I would have got it sooner but I wasn’t looking in the right place.”

“You’re talking about a system of Stargates,” McKay put in. “Where are you getting that from?”

Jackson looked at him in mild surprise. “Well, there are thirty-nine symbols. If our Stargate were only meant to be a portal between two fixed points there would only need to be seven symbols. These symbols are the equivalent of the I Ching, a means to have a huge number of permutations and combinations. That suggests a network to me. Probably a vast network. What’s frustrating is the lack of ‘gate addresses but I’m hoping that if we go to the address here…” He tapped the symbols in the cartouche, “…we may learn more.”

“Such as?” 

Hammond could tell Weaver was interested now. His body language had altered significantly and his gaze was fixed on Jackson with absolute concentration.

Jackson turned another photograph around. The inside of the tomb wall now. The writings the USAF had once stolen from him only to have to return them to him when they had need of his help. “We need more contextual information. We need to see a Stargate in situ, preferably being used.”

“Is that likely?” McKay put in. “Aren’t we talking of thousands of years of progress here? Would any of these things still be in use?”

Jackson raised an eyebrow at him. “Compared with the people who built this Stargate we’re still banging the rocks together. If they’re out there somewhere, they’ll be teaching us, not the other way around.”

“You don’t think it was our ancestors?” Weaver put in.

Hammond enjoyed the look of faint disbelief that flickered across Jackson’s face. “Graham Hancock would probably have a different theory but I’d say that was a definite no. There are no cultural references that approximate to this and as it’s a means to travel between two fixed points in space I’d say there’s a good chance it was brought here by people who are a lot more advanced about all kinds of space travel than we are.”

It was O'Neill who said quietly, “Our Stargate was buried. It was under the desert with rocks on it to hold it down.”

“Cover stones,” Jackson corrected automatically.

O'Neill gave him a glance of exasperation. “Whatever. My point is, someone on this world several thousand years ago thought the Stargate was dangerous.”

“It is.” Jackson blinked at him in mild confusion at having to explain anything so obvious. “It’s an instantaneous portal to another part of the galaxy and if we can go there, whoever is out there who knows the address for this world can come here. If I’m right and what we’ve found is one part of a much larger network then we’re like a subway station that has been closed for thousands of years. Because our track wasn’t running, no trains could come here and we couldn’t go anywhere else. But once we get our part of the track running again, well, it’s likely trains will come. But the people who got in the first boats and went to look for other continents were taking a huge risk. Every explorer whoever tried to find the source of a river or started hacking a path through the jungle was taking a risk. You can’t stay at home all day because you might catch cold if you step outside.” He looked into O'Neill’s eyes. “We both know you can be home and danger will still find you.”

“Doctor Jackson…?” Weaver leaned forward. “Supposing we dial this address. Supposing a wormhole is established. Supposing we find the atmosphere is breathable and we can send a team through. How would they get home? How would they know the address for this world?”

“They’d have to know the six symbols that represent this world.”

“Which are?” 

Hammond really hoped that Jackson wasn’t going to blink at the man and say that they didn’t know that yet but that it was a fascinating question. Jackson found the Stargate such an interesting academic puzzle it was sometimes a little difficult to know if he grasped the urgency of the matter, or the need the military had for hard facts and their disdain for theories, however interesting they might be to an archaeologist. He was having to force himself to sit still and not lean forward encouragingly in the hope of coaxing Jackson through this meeting.

Jackson pushed forward another photograph. “These symbols are from the tomb Sarah and I excavated. They’re part of writings which tell of the Sun God coming to… and then there are these symbols. I spent a long time trying to interpret them as hieroglyphs that form a name, for Egypt or for that province of Egypt. But when I looked at them with the symbols from the Stargate for comparison I realized that they’re crude representations of the Gate markings.” 

He pushed it closer to Weaver while everyone craned their necks to see, the men from the Pentagon breathing quickly as they realized this harmless-looking academic with the slightly rumpled clothes had solved what their most incisive military minds could not.

“So, this reads: ‘Ra, the Sun God, came to this world, through the Stargate’. But, when it says ‘this world’ it’s represented by its ’gate address.” Jackson pointed on the photographs. “So, if this is here, these six symbols are the address for Earth when you’re dialing up from another world, and that is there – the address for another world when you’re dialing from Earth – your team would be able to get back again by dialing those six symbols as long as they also knew the symbol for the point of origin.”

O'Neill sat back first. “That’s a lot of ‘if’s.”

“But it makes sense,” Carter said breathlessly. “Everything Daniel says makes sense. The thirty-nine symbols representing a network of Stargates. The point of origin symbol being outside the cartouche. These six symbols being the address for Earth when dialing from another world.”

“Dialing on what?” O'Neill demanded. “You seem to be making a lot of assumptions about all these missing pieces for which there isn’t any evidence.”

Jackson sighed. “Yes, because it’s logical to assume they exist. In the same way that if you found a couple of severed hands in a garbage bag in a river you’d assume the rest of the corpse was also in pieces somewhere in the area and that the deceased hadn’t died of natural causes. For this system to work the way it logically ought to work there has to be a dialing device that goes with each Stargate. And there must be a…railway timetable in the shape of a list of Stargate addresses. And there must be somewhere here –” he tapped the photograph of the symbols on the cartouche, “a symbol showing the point of origin for that world.”

“Because you say so?”

“Because it makes sense.”

“It does!” Carter’s eyes were shining in a way Hammond hadn’t seen before. “Sir…” She gave him a pleading look. “Can we send a probe through?”

Hammond looked at Weaver who gave him a thin smile and nodded. As Carter and McKay bounded from the room like two gazelles, Weaver turned to Jackson. “What can you tell us about the culture of the people who designed this Stargate system, Doctor Jackson?”

Jackson blinked. “Um…nothing really. Except that they were obviously very technologically advanced.”

“The writings in the tomb and on the cover stone don’t tell you anything at all?”

“We can’t assume the ‘Sun God’ who came through the Stargate in the earliest pre-dynastic era was necessarily of the race that built the Stargate, just of a race that knew how to use it. And, without further study, it’s hard to tell if the Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs as we know them were influenced by this culture or vice versa.” Jackson gave Weaver a hopeful look. “It really needs more study.”

Weaver said quietly to Hammond, “General, we need to talk.”

Hammond nodded to O'Neill and Jackson, tacitly asking them to clear up and wait for him outside. “Thank you, Doctor Jackson.”

“You’re welcome, General.” Jackson darted him a quick look, the self-possession that had carried him through the meeting, momentarily replaced by insecurity that he might not have done the right thing.

It was all Hammond could do not to pat him on the head. He confined himself to a very warm smile of approval. “Thank you for an excellent presentation.”

Jackson brightened considerably then, and his relief and the look of gratitude O'Neill shot in his direction made Hammond feel he was very well repaid. As he watched them go, he saw O'Neill ruffle Jackson’s hair fondly and heard him say, “You did good.” Although he would not have expressed it in those terms, Hammond thought the sentiment was both admirable and accurate, Jackson had indeed ‘done good’.

As soon as the door closed, Weaver said, “He’s done it.”

Hammond turned to him, trying to keep his face a careful blank. “You mean…?”

“I mean you get your wish. George. On condition you can send that probe through, there is now a Stargate Program and you’re running it.” Weaver looked thoughtfully at the symbols on the paper. “It’s a pity Jackson’s such a flake.”

Hammond bristled defensively. “He just solved what none of our experts could.”

Weaver acknowledged the point with a wave of the hand. “Because he’s a flake. Normal people don’t think the way he does. Their minds don’t work that way. In the military he’d be a nightmare, but as a secret weapon he could be unbeatable.” Another pause before he looked Hammond in the eye. “Are he and O'Neill a couple?”

“I don’t know.” Hammond returned his gaze unflinchingly. “And I don’t think that’s something I need to know.”

“As I understand it, the Program needs Jackson and Jackson needs O'Neill to stay out of a padded cell. Correct?”

Hammond privately thought that now he was no longer being systematically abused, manipulated and fed hallucinogenic drugs Jackson would never need to go near a psychiatric institute again, with or without O'Neill’s care. But he had no intention of saying as much to Weaver. He could see where this conversation was going and he was not averse to it getting there. “Correct.”

“Then it isn’t something you need to know or anyone else needs to know.” A pause. “He’ll have to go with the first team.”

“He’s a civilian archaeologist and we have no idea what could be out there.”

“It’s because we have no idea what could be out there that we need him, as do the team that goes with him. They won’t find the point of origin without him and we both know it. And the cultural aspects of the places visited will also have to explored and recorded. The budget is unjustifiable without some sound military benefits and some equally tangible additions to our sum total of knowledge. Astrophysical phenomena, however impressive, don’t tend to impress congressman who never graduated beyond eighth grade math.”

Hammond took the bull by the horns. “The only team on which Jackson would feel comfortable enough to function to his full capacity would be one led by Colonel O'Neill.”

“Colonel O'Neill told General Freeling to shove his job up his ass and then swivel.”

“He’d had a bad week.” Hammond let Weaver think it over before quietly persisting: “He’s an excellent officer. I’ve read all his reports. Jackson trusts him, and given the fact that Jackson has no liking for the US Air Force trust is very important.”

“Who else does Jackson trust?”

“Captain Carter.”

Weaver shrugged. “I have no problem with that. There’s more chance of everyone getting home if the team includes someone who understands the way the Stargate works. Anyone else?”

“I have someone in mind.”

“I hope it’s someone good. Jackson will have to be protected while he gathers the information for us.”

Hammond watched Weaver’s mind ticking over. The man was shrewd, ruthless as perhaps all military men should be, although Hammond wondered if he fell down on that score himself, and he was used to utilizing any advantage. Jackson was an advantage and Weaver wanted him utilized. He seemed to regard him as some kind of idiot savant, like a diviner who could sense the presence of wells beneath the earth or an otherwise mentally handicapped child who could tell a prime number at a glance.

“He couldn’t have better protection than O'Neill.”

Weaver only nodded. “Captain Carter isn’t too emotionally invested in him?”

“She’s very fond of him. Keeping him safe is something she would certainly endeavor to do.”

“Fond is fine.” Weaver nodded. “More than fond is a complication we don’t need, particularly if she and O'Neill are going to have to work together. I don’t need them fighting over Jackson.”

Hammond let the man see the truth of his words. “It’s a complication we don’t have.”

“And your other choice?”

“He considers himself indebted – to Jackson and to O'Neill. I believe he also has an affection for Captain Carter.” Hammond let the words sink in before continuing quietly. “We’re going to be sending them to the other side of the galaxy via a portal our scientists only imperfectly understand. I think it’s important that they’re comfortable with one another.”

“In case they never get home?” Weaver’s cynicism was occasionally refreshing, occasionally, as now, a little chilling. “Littlefield never did.”

“They’ll get home.” Hammond was determined about that.

Weaver nodded. “Send who you want, George. You choose the teams, you pick the destinations. But get some results. I suspect that Stargate of yours is Pandora’s Box and once we open it things are going to happen quickly. We’re opening a back door into the planet when we don’t know what’s out there so we’d better learn as much as we can as quickly as possible before – to borrow a phrase from Jackson – the rest of the network realizes our station is now accepting trains.”

“Doctor McKay has had some ideas about securing the Stargate. He’s got some safety protocols he wants to introduce.”

Weaver looked disdainful. “He needs to learn that risk is part of life.”

Hammond refused to rise to the bait. “A titanium iris which can be opened on receipt of a computer code sent by an off world team. Those attempting to use the Stargate without –”

Weaver waved a dismissive hand. “I don’t need the details. No doubt it will work. Just make sure the first team includes Jackson and that he tapes everything he sees.”

After the man had departed, Hammond felt slightly chilled by Weaver’s attitude to Doctor Jackson as some kind of genius canary that could be sent into mineshafts. And yet he knew he was right. It was unthinkable to send someone as militarily naïve as Jackson into a potentially hostile situation without companions who were armed, dangerous, and trained to the last degree. So also was it unthinkable to send men who were used to dealing with the tangible and the practical into a situation where they would be expected to recognize alien script and separate pictograms from hieroglyphs from one probably elusive symbol when their ability to do so would be the difference between them getting home or being stranded forever on the dark side of an alien sun. 

Hammond made his way to what Carter and McKay were already referring to casually as the ’gateroom. Even as he entered the room he could see the experiment had been a success. White-coated technicians were hugging one another and the ever-stoic Sergeant Harriman was grinning from ear to ear.

“Sir!” Carter looked up at him with her eyes shining. 

McKay was pointing at a screen with trembling fingers. “It’s sending back images!”

“It locked.” Carter was grinning in a way he’d never seen before. “The chevrons locked. The ‘water spout’ effect the reports spoke of was much more dramatic than it looked in the old footage. And look, you can see the fluctuations in the energy of the event horizon and –”

“Did Doctor Jackson see it?”

Carter looked guilty. “I didn’t… Can I…?”

Hammond nodded, unable to conceal his own smile of relief. 

She paused in the doorway. “Did General Weaver…?”

“We have a go, Captain.”

For a moment he thought Carter was going to throw her arms around his neck, but although she controlled herself her eyes with shining. “I need to tell Daniel.”

He nodded. “I think you do.”

“Are we timing this wormhole?” McKay was already making frantic calculations. “Is the computer getting this?”

“It’s getting everything it was programmed to get, sir,” Harriman said mildly.

Hammond looked out through the observation window and there was the Stargate, no longer a maddening possibility that might still elude them all, but a working mechanism, a gateway not just to the stars but to the infinite possibilities of other worlds, and other lifeforms. So many generations of the human race had wondered if they were alone in the universe. And now he was the man in charge of the program that was going to try and get definite proof.

“You have to see…!”

Carter towed Doctor Jackson into the room, O'Neill following a pace behind, an indulgent smile on his face. He looked a question at Hammond who nodded once.

O'Neill raised an eyebrow. “Congratulations, sir.”

Hammond nodded to Jackson. “Direct them to Doctor Jackson.”

Jackson glanced around in confusion, already flinching a little from Carter talking rapidly in one ear about the event horizon while McKay tried to direct his attention to the readout from the MALP. “What did I do?” Jackson asked a little anxiously.

“You just cost me my retirement.” Hammond softened it with a smile as Jackson looked as if he thought he’d done something wrong. “Thank you.”

“Yeah. Good job in there.” McKay slapped him on the arm. “Now, can you see the point of origin?”

“What?” Jackson was gazing at the Stargate. “It’s so beautiful.”

“It’s okay.” O'Neill moved closer to him, unobtrusively supportive beneath the casual veneer. “But I still think the fountains at Vegas have it beat.”

“Jack.” Jackson looked outraged. “It’s… It’s…” He turned to Carter. “Can I go down there and touch it?”

“Yes.”

“No.” O'Neill glared at Carter. 

“It’s not dangerous.” Jackson darted him a reproachful glance. “It’s just…”

“It just disintegrates things into sub-atomic particles and swooshes them a billion light years across the galaxy. No, Daniel, you can’t touch it.”

Carter and Jackson exchanged a glance of mutual sympathy. Hammond hoped that O'Neill also realized that the second his back was turned, Carter would be sneaking Jackson into the ’gateroom so he could examine the event horizon for himself.

“Jackson…” McKay grabbed a handful of Jackson’s jacket and tugged him down bodily to look at the MALP readout. “Can you see the symbol for the point of origin, or can’t you?”

“This is transmitting from that other planet?” Jackson automatically sank into a chair next to McKay, clearly fascinated by the readout, McKay and Carter both giving him information at the same time about what he was looking at, that was probably incomprehensible to him, Hammond suspected, and occasionally contradictory. 

Hammond caught O'Neill’s eye and the man came over at once. “General…?”

“General Weaver feels that any team which goes through the Stargate must include Doctor Jackson.”

O'Neill looked around at the airmen and technicians in the room and gritted his teeth. “Sir. With the greatest respect…”

Hammond thought O'Neill must indeed have a great deal of respect for him as, even with the potential eavesdroppers around, he had been expecting his immediate response to include several words the man had so far managed to repress. He held up a hand. “Let me continue. I told General Weaver that because of Doctor Jackson’s medical history I wasn’t prepared to expose him to that level of potential stress unless he was part of a hand-picked team of people in whom he had absolute trust. I do, however, agree with General Weaver that it would be greatly to the benefit of this program and the team in question, if Doctor Jackson was with them.”

O'Neill sighed heavily. “We both know that if you ask him, he’ll say ‘yes’. He’d go right now if you let him and I’m sure Carter wouldn’t even wait to pack her toothbrush either, but…”

“I want you to lead the team, Jack.”

O'Neill jerked his head round in surprise. “You… what…?”

Hammond realized this was a very good day and he was enjoying himself. “I’ve read your file. I know you can do this. You’re the right man for this job and more to the point you’re the one I want to do it.”

O'Neill opened and closed his mouth a few times and then said, “I… don’t know what to say.”

“ ‘Yes’ would suffice.”

O'Neill smiled and bowed his head. “Can I think it over? I did think I’d retired from active duty.”

Hammond inclined his head. “We both know you only get to leave the services when the services are ready to let you go. But of course you can think it over. Take all the time you need. However I am going to have to ask Doctor Jackson if he is willing to travel through the Stargate and if you’re not available to lead that particular team…”

“That’s cheap, sir. And sneaky.” O'Neill grinned at him. “I like that in a commanding officer.”

“I think we understand each other.”

“What about germs?”

They both turned to see Jackson frowning at the readout. 

“What about them?” McKay demanded.

“Well, look at this architecture. Pillars. Stairs. Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. Human beings carved this. There are torches burning which means they’re still living there.”

“That’s a good thing, isn’t it, Daniel?” Carter rested a hand on his shoulder.

He looked up at her, eyes shining. “It’s wonderful. Incredible. But… they may not have immunity to the diseases we carry. When Europeans first traveled to South America they carried the common cold and influenza to the indigenous people and the effects were disastrous. We can’t risk…”

“There’s going to be a health screening process,” Carter assured him. “Lots of blood tests.”

“Blood tests?” Jackson wrinkled his nose. “You mean…needles?”

“Big ones,” O'Neill called across. “The kind they give horse sedatives with. You haven’t known pain until you’ve experienced an Air Force doctor in a hurry with six hundred other people to immunize before lunchtime.” 

Jackson pulled a face at him before turning back to Carter. “Can you get that…shopping cart thing back?”

She shook her head. “Not through an outgoing wormhole. We’d have to send a team through to dial back to here.”

McKay reached out and bodily turned Jackson’s head to look at the other screen. “Which we can’t do unless you identify the symbol for the point of origin for that place.” 

“That means we’re culturally contaminating them.” Jackson nevertheless peered obligingly at the screen, running a finger down the hieroglyphs there. “This is that strange form of glyphs that was on the tomb Sarah and I investigated. More about Ra. Something about Seth…”

O'Neill sighed. “Happy as a pig in clover.” He glanced across at Hammond. “I presume you’re thinking me, Dannyboy, and Carter the Walking Gate Computer?”

“Captain Carter was my first choice for the third member of your team, yes, Colonel O'Neill.”

O'Neill shrugged. “Well, she and Daniel seem to get along okay and if her gun jams she could always blind an enemy with science. What about a fourth?”

Hammond looked back at the shimmering Stargate. “I have someone in mind.”

O'Neill nodded. “That’s good enough for me, General. Unless I don’t like him, of course. In which case I reserve the right to bitch and whine.”

“So noted.” Hammond said, “Do I take that as acceptance…?”

“I’m still thinking.” O'Neill looked back at Jackson and then at the wormhole still shimmering blue within the stone circle of the Stargate.

There was a pause in which Hammond looked around the control room again. He wondered if there had been this kind of energy in the room when Mission Control had finally got that first man on the moon. This felt like the next logical step to him, the next giant leap for mankind, yet it was another mission he had thought of from the beginning when thinking of this project, of what it would mean to be the man standing here telling other men to take that step into the unknown with no way of knowing what they might meet and if they would ever be coming back.

“General…”

O'Neill’s more serious tone made him look around in surprise. “Yes?”

“My youngest brother once told me that you can learn a lot about a man by who his heroes are and why. At the time I think mine was probably Bugs Bunny, but I guess the theory still stands. May I ask…?”

“Gene Kranz,” Hammond returned unhesitatingly. “Has been since 1970.”

O'Neill frowned. “I know the name but I can’t place…”

“He was a fighter pilot who became Flight Director in NASA's Mission Control. He was in charge when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took their first steps on the moon in 1969.”

“You said he’d been your hero since 1970…?”

“He was Director of Mission Operations at Johnson Space Center in 1970 when Apollo 13 was crippled by an explosion in space with three pilots on board. Gene Kranz was the one who said failure wasn’t an option.” Hammond met O'Neill’s gaze. “He’s the man who got his people home.”

O'Neill’s eyes widened, something clicking into place for him, then he saluted, suddenly formal. “It would be an honor to lead a team through the Stargate under your command, General Hammond.”

Hammond also saluted. “Welcome on board, Colonel O'Neill.”

***

Daniel looked around the guest room in Jack’s house gloomily. He didn’t like this room. It was painted a pale apricot shade that was a welcome contrast to the gloom of Gray Gables. In the mornings the sun shone through the drapes and turned the whole room the color of sunrise in the desert and his heart would lift. There were two bookcases for his books to match the several in the living room and the dining room and the two in the garage that Jack hadn’t got around to screwing together yet although he’d promised he would do it soon. On the walls were his masks and swords, artifacts left to him by his parents and by Nick. On the floor was a rug Jack had bought him because he thought he might like it. He did. The bed was comfortable too. Not the oppressive four poster of Gray Gables, but modern and well sprung. There was nothing about this room not to like except the fact it was the guest room, but Daniel did dislike that very much.

He was very happy with the other changes that had happened to his life. His grief for Nick was always with him. He still remembered how Sha’re’s lips had felt against his mouth when they’d kissed so briefly, remembered the way her face had lit up when she talked about her husband, talked about how much she wanted a child. But Tony was fading every day. There had always been something of the nightmare about his nocturnal visits. It was the boy Tony had once been that he felt sorry for, that mixed up hormonally driven seventeen year old who’d written himself off after one bad lapse and decided to write off a whole group of other people as a consequence. There were flashbacks several times a day, certainly, like photographic images scattered before his eyes. Splinters of horror still embedded in his memory.

But there were good things too. He loved the Stargate Program. Even though there were still a hundred tests being run and the teams weren’t quite ready to go through, he couldn’t think of another job he would have found more exciting or more inviting. Carter and McKay’s enthusiasm – even tempered as it was by their more or less constant squabbling – was fun to be around, and the thought of being able to interact with other races and to learn if they had any connection with the past cultures of Earth was a mouthwatering prospect.

He loved many aspects of sharing a house with Jack O'Neill as well. Given his carefully cultivated image as a taciturn sarcastic grouch, the man was surprisingly funny, considerate and good-tempered. And despite his refusing to admit it, Daniel was certain that Jack was looking forward to going through the Stargate as much as he was. The man seemed to have a new lease of life since quitting the Police Force and returning to the Air Force. He looked years younger and there was a new spring in his step.

What he very emphatically didn’t like was that Jack had made no move of any kind to progress their relationship. Despite the fact they lived together, shopped together, ate together, went for walks together, saw movies together, watched television together, drove into Cheyenne Mountain every morning and drove home again at night in the same car, they didn’t sleep together. And despite everyone who knew them comfortably assuming they were a couple, all they were was friends. Not that anyone ever asked them directly, of course, because of the USAF regulations that meant neither asking nor telling was encouraged. For that reason he hadn’t been able to do what he might otherwise have done and ask Sam what you did to find out if someone who seemed to be fond of you found you desirable or not. He just had no experience of that. He felt there was a connection between himself and Jack that was romantic as well as friendly and affectionate, but he wasn’t absolutely sure.

As McKay was a civilian scientist, Daniel had taken the unprecedented step of asking him, but McKay had been gazing moodily at Sam across the room and said a distracted: “What?”

“I said: How do you know if you’re…in love?” Daniel grimaced with embarrassment at asking such an adolescent question but McKay had just shrugged, gloomily.

“Love is just hormones.”

Daniel couldn’t help wondering if McKay would have been feeling quite as cynical if he and Sam hadn’t had one of their habitual Big Loud Fights, this last one terminating in Sam telling McKay to go swim in a lemon meringue pie.

“What’s romance then?” he prompted.

McKay glowered at a young airman who had just brought Sam a sheet of calculations and received a kind smile for his trouble. “Romance?” he echoed. “That’s just hormones with poetry. Does that guy look kind of cross-eyed to you? He looks cross-eyed to me. And shifty. Definitely shifty.”

Daniel walked away from that conversation trying to frame a conversation with Jack that began with him reciting poetry and ended with him suggesting their hormones interlocked, and couldn’t really see how that would work. He would have assumed sadly that it was just a one-way crush on his part and Jack simply being friendly and kind in taking responsibility for him because he felt sorry for him, except there were too many hints that it wasn’t like that. Half the time when he looked across at Jack he found the man was already gazing at him, and with the same wistful expression in his eyes that Daniel felt in his heart whenever he looked at Jack. And there had been that marine who had been asking Daniel lots of really very intelligent questions about the cultures that it might be possible for them to encounter on the other side of the ’gate, given the era in which it had been buried, and the geographical location of the ’gate. The man had been polite, friendly, funny, and intelligent, certainly not threatening or disrespectful in any way, but Jack had come in on the middle of the conversation and basically glowered at the marine until he’d gone away. Then it had turned out Jack hadn’t even come in to Daniel’s office for anything in particular, except possibly to interrupt that conversation. When the sales assistants in the stores they visited smiled at Daniel or tried to make friendly conversation, Jack always moved closer and looked at them in a way that made it clear Daniel was spoken for, and yet he had never actually spoken for him, or on the subject of romance, even spoken to him.

Daniel had waited, quite patiently, he thought, for Jack to progress the situation and absolutely nothing had happened. Which was why he didn’t like his beautifully painted bedroom in Jack’s now fully purchased house – because he wanted to be sleeping in the same bed as Jack O'Neill and waking up next to him, and jostling with him for room in front of the mirror and the sink each morning as he tried to shave. 

And he wanted to have sex. Nice, normal, kissing and touching, loving sex. The kind he remembered having with Sarah and now really wanted to have with Jack. It made him feel like some kind of freak that they were living in the same space with this attraction unacknowledged between them, and Jack, who had always seemed to him to be the kind of guy with a pretty high libido, never making a single move. It was starting to make him feel as if he was not just damaged goods but irretrievably damaged goods. He looked at himself in the mirror sometimes to try to see what Jack could see and thought he looked okay. He had reasonably even features. Average height, average build. He didn’t have zits or buck teeth. Yes, he wore glasses, but he didn’t think that by itself could be enough to explain Jack’s apparent lack of interest in him, they did come off, after all, and if Jack only moved close enough Daniel could see him just fine without them. And, if the man thought that what Tony had done to him had permanently killed his sex drive, then he was wrong. His sex drive was alive and well, it was just a little nervous and would have much appreciated something slow and tender from someone who wasn’t drugging him to have sex with him or likely to punch him before, during, or afterwards. If Jack couldn’t see that what Daniel really needed right now was some affirmation from someone sane who found him attractive despite the things Tony had done to him, Daniel thought Jack was being a little on the stupid side, and it was really starting to annoy him.

He showered disconsolately, pulled on his shorts and a t-shirt and thought about going to bed, but, although it was late, he could hear from the noise of the television set that Jack was still up and still watching some sporting event that was probably on its third replay. As always, when he had nothing else to occupy him, he found himself instinctively drifting to the place where the man was, a magnetic attraction tugging him in the direction that he didn’t seem to want or be able to ignore.

As he entered the living room, he saw Jack sitting on the couch. The man was barefoot, long elegant feet so clean on the soles that he must also have recently had a shower. He was wearing his jeans, the denim hugging his hips naturally faded from years of wear. They could have been the same ones Daniel saw the man wearing in the photographs around the house, Jack’s figure hadn’t changed much over the years. He kept himself in trim and Daniel had been finding it increasingly difficult of late not to notice the lean muscle of the man’s body, the breadth of his shoulders, the narrowness of his waist, those incredibly long legs. It didn’t help that Jack was only wearing a shirt over his jeans and that it was unbuttoned, revealing chest hair on which a few droplets from the shower were still glistening.

As Daniel drew closer, he saw Jack had a whiskey bottle out and was just pouring himself a drink. Too many years of associating alcohol with Tony made him wince before he could stop himself.

“Sorry.” Jack twisted around in his seat and made to shove the bottle back into the cabinet.

Swallowing quickly, Daniel said, “Don’t I get one?”

“What?” Jack looked over his shoulder at him in surprise, still frozen in the act of putting the bottle away.

“A nightcap.” Daniel managed a watery smile. “I am over eighteen.”

Jack raised an eyebrow, and then snagged another glass from the cabinet and poured Daniel a measure of the amber liquid. “Here you go.”

As Daniel went to take the glass from his hand, he saw the label on the square bottle. “JackDaniels.” He grinned. “We have our own brand?”

“Sure.” Jack held up his glass and clinked it gently against Daniel’s. “Cheers.”

Daniel sniffed the whiskey cautiously and at once he was remembering the taste of it on Tony’s lips, the stink of it on both of them, as the man forced the bottle into his mouth and told him to swallow. That made him think of that final car journey with Teal’c bleeding to death on the back seat and Tony… 

He didn’t realize he’d closed his eyes until he opened them and found Jack was standing in front of him, the glass gently removed from his fingers. “Okay?” the man asked quietly.

“Fine.” Daniel tried to smile. “I just…”

There was so much compassion in Jack’s brown eyes. “I know. Come on…” A warm hand on Daniel’s shoulder guided him carefully to the armchair. “Do you want some hot milk?”

As the man turned to head for the kitchen, Daniel said in exasperation, “How old do you think I am?”

Jack’s eyebrows flickered skywards. “To put the whiskey in. I’m having some.”

Daniel made no attempt to hide his skepticism. “You drink hot milk before bedtime?”

“If I can’t sleep, sure.” Jack shrugged.

As the man disappeared into the kitchen, Daniel darted a look of dislike at the glass of whiskey, then abruptly reached out, snatched it up, and threw the contents down his throat. It burned a fiery path down his throat to his guts and he gasped at the impact. He could feel it warming his blood, his tongue still a little numb with the shock of the alcohol upon it but awakening swiftly as the whiskey swirled through his system. Determined now, he reached across, snagged Jack’s glass and drank that too. When the man came back in with his two mugs of hot milk, he raised an eyebrow again at the sight of the empty glasses. 

“Can I have another one?” Daniel asked defiantly.

Jack put down the mugs on the table and picked up the bottle. As he poured a measure into each mug of milk, he said conversationally, “A few house rules. If you’re going to go on living here, you need to stop acting like this is my house and you’re just a guest here. You can touch anything you like that I haven’t actually locked away in a tin box marked ‘private’.”

Daniel swallowed again. “Does that include you?”

“What?” Jack put down the whiskey bottle.

Daniel lost his nerve somewhere between the elegance of Jack’s fingers and the unfathomable expression in his eyes. Hastily averting his eyes, he said, “I don’t know what I am in your life, Jack.”

“Part of it, I hope.” Jack sat back on the couch and took a sip of the milk. The way he had to stop himself from pulling a face told Daniel that he didn’t usually cushion his whiskey with lactose and this charade had been all for the insomniac Daniel’s benefit.

“Am I living here until I’m right enough in the head to live by myself or…what…?”

Jack reached across to hand him the second mug, holding it so Daniel could take the handle easily. “Are you saying you want to get a place of your own?”

“No.” Daniel automatically took the mug and then realizing what he was doing, put it down on the table. “I don’t want hot milk. I want… I want us to be what everyone thinks we are.”

“Friends?” Jack determinedly took another sip and manfully avoided spitting it out. Daniel guessed that was the military discipline coming into play.

“No one thinks we’re friends.” Daniel let him see the exasperation he was feeling.

“I thought we were.” Jack’s tone was calm, his gaze steady. 

Daniel had never wanted to throw a book at anyone’s head quite so much. Now they were so close, intimacy spilling through the edges of their relationship like a badly wrapped parcel, he felt so helpless when he looked at him, weak with the depths of his own infatuation. It was torture to be here like this, so physically close and still a thousand miles away from any intimacy. If they were never going to progress beyond friendship, he wasn’t sure he could bear to go on living here, seeing Jack every day, but knowing that he might walk in with a girlfriend any minute, or get back together with his ex-wife. And yet, the thought of not living with him seemed equally unbearable. He had come to rely on him so completely in such a short period of time, become so frighteningly dependent on his company and support, his friendship and advice. 

This time when he looked across at the man he didn’t hide the way he felt, how much or how hopelessly, reproach in his eyes because Jack was making things so unnecessarily difficult when all he wanted to know was where he stood. “Do you want to sleep with me or don’t you?”

Jack put a hand up to his head. “Daniel…”

“Don’t talk to me like I’m six years old, Jack. Either you do or you don’t and if you don’t…”

“It’s not that simple.” Jack gave him a look that was a mixture of exasperation and affection that made Daniel very aware of that fiery path the whiskey had burned through his guts.

“Why isn’t it?”

“Because your sexual experience isn’t exactly…normal.”

“Oh, so you don’t want to sleep with me because I’m too soiled by my relationship with Tony, is that what you’re saying?”

Jack put down the mug and glared at him. “No, you idiot, that is not what I’m saying. I’m saying I don’t think you have any true comprehension of the concept of ‘consent’.”

Daniel blinked at him in confusion. Of course he knew what ‘consent’ meant. He could pronounce it and spell it in twenty different languages, which was more than most people could. “Are you just saying that because you don’t find me attractive and you don’t want to hurt my feelings?”

Jack clasped a hand to his forehead as if in physical pain and when he spoke it sounded as if his teeth were gritted. “No, Daniel. I’m saying it because I have problem with asking someone if they want to sleep with me who doesn’t know how to say ‘no’.”

He felt a flash of anger of his own. “I didn’t avoid saying ‘no’ to Tony because it didn’t occur to me, Jack. I didn’t say it because there wouldn’t have been any point. But if I can move on from the shitty mess that has been my life for the past four years, why can’t you?”

“Prove it.” Jack got to his feet and looked down at him. His impossibly long legs were very obvious in those jeans that also accentuated the narrow strength of his hips. His shirt was undone and Daniel could clearly see his chest hair, a maddening fuzz just starting to silver. The lamplight picked out the paler strands in his hair, the length of his eyelashes, the line of his jaw, the vulnerability of his throat. He looked implacable and unreachable and impossibly handsome. “I’m going to bed. The only thing stopping you from joining me there is you.”

Daniel watched Jack make a graceful exit from the room, bare feet silent on the carpet, the man already unbuttoning his jeans as he walked away, tugging the flap open with one deft twist of his wrist that made Daniel’s whiskey-flavored throat go abruptly dry. Finally, he saw what Jack had been talking about because it had never occurred to him even for a moment that he could make the first move. He had always imagined it would be Jack who came to his room, not the other way round, always Jack who kissed him. He had been waiting patiently to be seduced without it ever occurring to him that perhaps he could do something to move the situation forward.

A little dazed, he drank the hot milk Jack had brought him, took the dirty mugs and glasses into the kitchen, rinsed them under the sink, stacked them in the dishwasher, went into the bathroom, peed, washed his hands, brushed his teeth, carefully washed the toothpaste down the sink so it wouldn’t mark the porcelain, and then realized his heart was pounding so hard that he had to lean against the wall. He breathed deeply, trying to stop the panic attack from taking a hold of him. He could see Jack walking away from him, that flick of the wrist as he unbuttoned his jeans, that brief glimpse of the material flapping to the side, Jack’s reflection a shimmer in the mirror on the hallway as he passed it. He heard the sound of the water heater stop and realized Jack must have finished in his own bathroom. The one in his bedroom. Had finished all the washing and shaving and peeing and tooth-brushing that he had evidently been doing himself. He imagined Jack crossing the room from his bathroom to his bed, getting under the duvet, sleeping so neatly on one half of the bed, the way he still did. Daniel had thought he slept like that because he was still subconsciously waiting for his wife to come back to him. It hadn’t occurred to him for an instant that the space in Jack’s bed could have been left for him.

Snatching a breath, Daniel moved purposefully out of the bathroom, crossed the hallway and walked through the open doorway into Jack’s bedroom. When he darted a glance across the room, there the man was, just where he’d imagined him, now wearing a t-shirt and presumably his shorts, sitting up on the right side of the bed, the sheet folded back in readiness in case Daniel found the courage to join him there.

Deliberately not making eye contact with him, Daniel walked around the bed to the left side, saying conversationally, “I’m getting into bed with you now. Is that okay?” He couldn’t help darting a glance at him then, as his heart threatened to pound its way out of his chest like a bird with an egg tooth breaking loose from its shell, needing to see that they really were on the same page.

Jack shrugged. “Fine with me.” But the look he gave Daniel was very gentle and his smile was as sweet as it was approving.

Carefully, Daniel climbed into the bed. He paused to remove his glasses and place them, not without defiance, on the bedside table on what was now his side of the bed. Then he slithered down under the duvet, very aware of the warmth of Jack’s body beside him. At once, Jack also slid down so their heads were both resting on the pillows. Gently, Jack said, “Maybe tonight, we could just sleep?”

“Okay.” Daniel realized he had certainly used up all the initiative he had getting this far so was frankly relieved not to be expected to come up with any more ideas. 

As Jack rolled onto his side and switched off the nightlight, Daniel inched closer to him and tentatively rested his head against the man’s back. He could smell Jack’s skin through the thin skin of his t-shirt, not just the soap he’d washed with and the toothpaste he’d cleaned his teeth with, but the indefinable warm scent that was Jack. He inhaled it furtively, rubbing his face gently against the man’s back, thinking about kissing his skin. Gingerly, he reached out and rested a hand on Jack’s ribs. At once the man touched his hand gently with his own, lacing his fingers through Daniel’s and pulling his arm around him. When he held Daniel’s hand against his heart, Daniel exhaled with relief and let himself relax against the lean warmth of Jack’s body, a silly smile on his face that he couldn’t seem to suppress.

“Goodnight, Daniel,” Jack said softly.

“Goodnight, Jack.” Daniel realized the man must be able to tell from his voice just how idiotically he was grinning. He also realized that he didn’t care.

***

The last piece in the puzzle. Hammond hadn’t known exactly how it was going to click into place he just knew that at some point it had to. Maybourne and Teal’c had disagreed about Jackson so fundamentally that it had become clear Teal’c was going to have to transfer and Hammond had been at his side in the hospital to mention the secret government project which might possibly be taking shape and for which Teal’c was so eminently qualified. 

The last of those future echoes that had appeared to him in the past. An event that was history to him although it had not yet happened for any of the other four people involved. And here was the last of the four of them tapping politely on his door….

What still wasn’t clear to him was how those four had ended up on the same team because he was fully intending to give Teal’c his own command and there was nothing in the man’s notes to suggest he would turn it down.

 

“I can’t.”

Standing in front of Hammond’s desk, Teal’c was a picture of distress, his attitude made all the more surprising, because with his perfect physique and swift, deft movements, it was clear that this was not a man who was much prone to doubt.

It wasn’t the answer he had been expecting and Hammond frowned in confusion. “Major Teal’c…?”

“I have to be on SG-1.”

Even though a part of him had been waiting to hear Teal’c say exactly that, it was still a shock. “That isn’t an option.”

Teal’c grimaced. “I don’t mean to be difficult, General. I’m very grateful for the offer of my own team, but I really do need to be on SG-1.”

“Major Teal’c, if you doubt your own abilities, I can assure you that you are perfectly qualified command your own team.”

“I know. It isn’t that.”

Hammond took a deep breath. “I can’t allocate you to a field unit that is led by a Lieutenant Colonel and also includes a Captain.”

“I have to be on Jackson’s team, sir.”

Teal’c was stood ramrod straight and no one would have known the man had so narrowly cheated death only a few months before. He looked the picture of perfect physical health. 

Hammond said gently, “I’m afraid I can’t allow it, Major. O'Neill is the leader of SG-1 and Captain Carter has already booked her place on that team.”

“I’m happy to serve under Colonel O'Neill.” Teal’c darted him a pleading look. “But I have to be on Jackson’s team.”

Hammond put a hand up to his head. “Perhaps if you told me why…?”

Teal’c hesitated. “When we were in the equivalent of a combat situation, I didn’t do a thing to help Jackson and he did everything in his power to help me. He did… He did more than I would have done for him. I owe him. I need to be one of the people helping to keep him safe.” 

“I don’t think Doctor Jackson feels you owe him anything, Major,” Hammond put in gently. “If you had any kind of obligation to him it was to recover from your injuries and you did so.”

Teal’c darted another glance at Hammond. “General, how can any team be over-qualified? We don’t know what we’re going to be up against out there. I’m sure Captain Carter’s a great soldier but she can’t put O'Neill over her shoulder and carry him home if he gets shot, and Jackson’s a civilian. He’s also the only guy we have who seems to be able to understand the language of the alien races out there. How can he be too well protected?”

Hammond sighed. “I’ve read the report you submitted to Colonel Maybourne in which you completely exonerate Doctor Jackson from any wrongdoing over the matter of the broken canopic jar. I know you and Colonel Maybourne disagreed over your handling of the last mission.”

“He wanted me to kidnap Jackson. I don’t do that.” Teal’c stood even straighter. “I’m like O'Neill, General. I’ve done things I shouldn’t have done because I was ordered to do them. In the end you have to choose what orders you’re willing to follow. And that comes down to the man giving them. I want to be part of this project. I want to be under your command. But I have an obligation to Jackson I can’t fulfill unless he’s on my team or I’m on his.”

There was a pause as Hammond wondered how he could justify this. Ultimately, perhaps Teal’c’s own argument was the best one. How could any team be over-qualified for stepping through a wormhole into the unknown? “I’ll have to talk to Colonel O'Neill…”

“Thank you, sir.” Teal’c closed his eyes in relief.

“I’m not promising anything.”

“No, sir.” But Teal’c was smiling.

Hammond nodded. “Dismissed, Major.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” Teal’c walked from the room with the quiet grace of an athlete and Hammond had to admit if only to himself that he felt the better for thinking of Doctor Jackson being protected by such a man. But whether O'Neill would agree was another matter entirely. He might not appreciate the competition.

 

To his surprise, when he asked to speak to O'Neill and during their interview mentioned Teal’c’s odd insistence, O'Neill only nodded. “It’s fine with me.”

“He’s something of a maverick. Used to working by himself.”

“We’ll shake down.” O'Neill was unreadable today. 

“So, you’ve no objection?”

O'Neill shook his head. “He’s difficult to kill, we know that much, and on this project I imagine that’s an advantage.”

Fishing, Hammond said, “He seems to feel he has some kind of obligation to Doctor Jackson.”

A muscle flickered in O'Neill’s cheek and at once Hammond went from being curious to realizing this was something he didn’t want to know.

“He and Daniel did some bonding in adversity, I think. Any word on when the teams will be ready to ship out?”

“A few more safety measures still need to be implemented and protocols tested, Colonel.” Hammond definitely wanted the subject changed as well. That tensing of O'Neill’s jaw had given him an unpleasant inkling into the reason for Teal’c’s insistence, an unwanted reminder that the sweet-natured and vague academic with that brilliant mind under his untidily cut hair had spent far too many years of his life the prisoner of a madman. It bothered him greatly to think of those years when Daniel Jackson had been in a psychiatric hospital for no reason other than the greed of his relatives and incompetence or worse of his doctors.

“Will you tell Carter or shall I?” O'Neill’s question broke into his thoughts.

Hammond barely restrained a smile. “I think Major Teal’c would probably appreciate hearing it first.”

 

O'Neill found the man in the commissary, already sitting down and eating. He watched Teal’c covertly as he collected his own lunch, wondering how someone who looked like that had ever been so successful as an undercover agent. Teal’c wasn’t exactly the kind of guy who could blend into a crowd. Not unless it was a crowd of quarterbacks anyway. Teal’c was eating with surprising delicacy, twirling spaghetti around his fork with one hand, a book open in front of him that was written in Arabic. O'Neill recognized the slanting script which had always been completely incomprehensible to him. He had never understood how Daniel could so enjoy grappling with not just different languages but different alphabets. 

“Good book?” he enquired.

Teal’c looked up. “Very.” A pause then: “How’s Jackson?”

O'Neill looked at his watch. “Probably getting a little low on caffeine, but otherwise fine.”

“Did General Hammond tell you…?”

“About your neurotic compulsion to gatecrash my team? Yep.”

Teal’c closed the book to look at him with great intensity. “I owe Jackson my life.”

O'Neill put his head on one side. “You owe the surgeons who spent all those hours in the operating theater putting you back together your life. And the people who donated their blood to keep you alive.”

“Ballard-Green would have killed me for sure if Jackson hadn’t talked him out of it.” 

The kind of unwavering focus Teal’c directed on the unwary was pretty impressive. O'Neill could see the man would be able to psych out almost anyone if he put his mind to it. Probably no one could withstand that kind of unblinking concentration for long. O'Neill shrugged. “I’ve no objection. Do scientists annoy you?”

“Intensely.”

“Well, we’re going to have two of them with us twenty-four-seven.”

“Captain Carter and I have already met.” A smile tugged at Teal’c’s mouth. “I think we can work together pretty well. We both nearly got killed by the same man – that has to give us something in common.”

As if on cue, Carter and McKay walked into the commissary together, still arguing, O'Neill noted, about something to do with tachyons. 

“They don’t exist,” he called across. “Total science fiction. Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light.”

“Sub-atomic particles probably do it all the time.” Teal’c nodded to her. “Captain Carter.”

“Major Teal’c.” 

She looked pleased as well as surprised O'Neill noticed, which he hadn’t necessarily expected. She collected herself. “It’s good to see you looking so well, Major Teal’c.”

Teal’c smiled at her. “And you, Captain.”

O'Neill cleared his throat. “Major Teal’c is going to be joining us on SG-1, Carter.”

That was definitely not a look of disappointment on her face. O'Neill automatically looked at McKay who was looking at Teal’c without enthusiasm. “You’re an Air Force Major who’s interested in sub-atomic particles?”

Teal’c shrugged. “I like to keep up on current events wherever possible. I subscribe to a few science journals. Nothing too specialized but I know the difference between a gluon and a quark.”

“It’s pronounced ‘quork’,” McKay put in.

Teal’c glanced at him without much interest. “I’ve read that but it’s never made sense to me, given the context of its original usage in Finnegan’s Wake. Joyce clearly meant it to rhyme with ‘Mark’.”

Carter leaned forward, demonstrating rather neatly, O'Neill thought, Newton’s theory that all physical objects were constantly exerting gravitational force upon one another. Or was that Einstein’s theory? Either way it definitely seemed to work. “You read James Joyce and understand quantum theory?”

Teal’c’s shrug was masterful. “Who isn’t interested in quantum theory these days?”

O'Neill raised his hand. “Me.”

“It’s the last frontier, Colonel. The world even Einstein couldn’t understand.”

McKay was looking decidedly glum now. “Can you cook?” he asked.

Teal’c gave him a glance of amused superiority. “Of course.”

O'Neill sat back in his chair. “He speaks Arabic too. Do sit down.” He pulled back a chair for Carter next to Teal’c, blatantly mischief making and enjoying the experience.

As Carter sat down next to Teal’c, McKay was forced to take the place next to O'Neill, watching Teal’c through narrowed eyes as he did so.

“I wanted to apologize.” Teal’c gazed unblinkingly at Carter. “I said some things that were way out of line.”

“Me too.”

O'Neill noticed that brief pause as they both glanced briefly at Carter’s breasts. He noticed that Carter also flickered a look in the direction of Teal’c’s groin. Missions could get very interesting with these two along for the ride. 

“I hope you won’t hold it against me.”

“Not at all.”

They definitely seemed to be gazing into each other’s eyes now. O'Neill wondered if perhaps he was playing with matches taking these two on a mission. Then he thought about him and Daniel and decided that playing with gasoline and a flamethrower might be nearer the mark.

“I was pretty rude myself.”

Carter looked really attractive when she did that, that hint of color in her cheek, hooking one bit of fair hair behind her ear. When she wasn’t being all geeky and science-obsessed and annoying she was very nice-looking.

“You were right about those azaleas though.”

Teal’c was definitely the kind of guy he would not have wanted around Sara at parties, the charming, confident, knows-he’s-amazingly-good-in-bed kind of guy who women always stuck to like flypaper. Carter might be a science geek girl but there was clearly nothing wrong with her hormones. It had to be a full minute since she’d blinked. 

“I’m glad you’re okay.” 

Carter sounded a little breathless to O'Neill. This could get to be fun, especially with McKay as a witness. Not that he didn’t like McKay. He kind of did. But these sorts of events were always fun to watch, although probably not much fun to participate in. 

“You too.” Teal’c moistened his lips. “Would you be able to explain the way the Stargate works to me in terms a very amateur astrophysicist could understand?”

Carter positively beamed at him. “I’m sure I could.”

“I’d better help,” McKay put in. “Captain Carter always forgets about the safety protocols.”

Teal’c got to his feet without once taking his eyes off Carter. “I’m not too good about remembering those myself….”

O'Neill watched them head off to Carter’s lab to talk physics and thought that McKay was definitely going to put up a fight and would almost certainly win in the long run but that both Carter and Teal’c were certainly going to have a lot of fun driving him crazy in the interim. He suspected he was going to have even more fun spectating from his ringside seat as their CO. Humming cheerfully he began to dig into his ravioli. He had no idea if the team that had chosen him would turn out to be the mismatched shambles it possibly appeared, or a winning formula of complementary skills and bone-deep loyalty that would prove unbeatable in the field. Commonsense told him it was probably the former but his instincts as a soldier told him it was the latter. However it turned out, SG-1 was now officially a team.

***

O'Neill woke in the darkness and became aware of the warmth of another body next to his, two breathing rhythms, two heartbeats. Daniel. Tonight was the first time he hadn’t experienced that confused millisecond when he thought it must be Sara beside him. They had progressed gradually from wearing t-shirts and shorts to bed, to him wearing nothing and Daniel usually wearing a towel draped around his waist from his evening shower. For the last three nights, however, Daniel had left off even the towel and they had slept together naked, not always touching, but their skin tantalizingly close. Their bodies would unconsciously mirror one another and he would mentally map Daniel’s planes and hollows in his mind from the heat so close to his. The smooth line of his thigh, the knots of his spine, the pert curve of his ass. He went to sleep semi-aroused and awoke the same way, always aware of Daniel’s scent, his soap and coffee and shower gel and toothpaste and shampoo odors, wanting to lick his skin, wanting to touch him, but making himself wait, needing this move, more than any other, to come from Daniel.

Now, as his eyes adjusted to the dim room, he realized it must be a full moon tonight. The drapes weren’t closed properly and a thin bar of silvery light was shining on the far wall. He wondered if it was illuminating Daniel’s face and turned to look at him.

Daniel’s head was on the pillow beside him, and the moonlight was indeed bathing the smooth skin of his exposed shoulder, the line of his cheekbone and jaw, the length of his eyelashes, the curve of his mouth. O'Neill leaned forward and kissed him very gently on the lips. As he moved back, he saw the long eyelashes sweep upwards and Daniel look right at him.

“Sorry.” O'Neill smiled at him. “I couldn’t resist.”

Daniel just gazed at him, peaceful and quiet and O'Neill kissed him again, brushing his mouth across his gently, wanting to see how Daniel responded. As his mouth opened in invitation, O'Neill deepened the kiss a fraction, letting their tongues lap against one another, before he finished with another brush of his lips against Daniel’s. A warm sweet kiss. That was probably plenty for tonight. Tomorrow they could – 

Daniel abruptly reached up, pulled O'Neill’s head down, and kissed him, not at all chastely on the lips. As O'Neill gasped for breath, he felt a warm tongue slip into his mouth, and then Daniel was making a determined effort to suck the lungs out of his chest. His body responded at once, even as his mind was still reeling from the realization that Daniel had evidently got a little tired of waiting for him to progress their relationship to the next stage, every cell in his skin was tingling at its proximity to Daniel’s lean warmth. His hands were in Daniel’s hair before he could stop himself, and as Daniel pulled back to snatch a breath, O'Neill gazed into his eyes, both of them panting in unison, then he kissed him, showing Daniel that if archaeologists could kiss well so could soldiers. 

When they pulled apart it was only to snatch another breath. Daniel looked into his eyes, chest heaving and O'Neill reached out to touch his face before bending his neck to kiss him again, slow and deep this time, a thorough exploration, tongues intertwining. As Daniel fell back onto the pillow, his eyes clearly invited O'Neill to follow and he rolled on top of him before kissing him again. Daniel’s hands on his body were a welcome surprise, warm elegant fingers so delicately tracing patterns on his skin, mapping his ribs, stroking the faint fuzz of hair from his navel to his groin. Strong fingers stroked the inside of his thighs before gently caressing his balls, a thumb circling them as if they were artifacts of incalculable worth. O'Neill snatched another breath, his skin prickling with eager sweat. Daniel was gazing up at him as if he was the most fascinating thing he’d ever seen in his life, skin silvery blue from the bar of moonlight, the unruly fluff of his uneven bangs soft as kitten fur. 

“Do you have any massage oil?” Daniel whispered.

Without a word, O'Neill rolled off him and began to fumble in his bedside stand. He had never thought he’d be grateful for a back and knees that still twinged from his collision with the desert, but without that injury he probably wouldn’t have gotten into the massage habit. He had a bottle that was nearly new and had been intending to ask Daniel if he didn’t mind working it into his lower back the next time it began to rain. He passed it over and Daniel unscrewed the top with flattering haste before pouring it into his hands. Rolling back onto Daniel to steal another kiss, a moment later, O'Neill could only gasp as skilful hands began to smooth the oil up his thighs and then along his awakening cock. 

Daniel was good. He hadn’t expected this, but of course a guy was always going to be better at this than a woman, it had just been a while since he’d gotten passionate with anyone who wasn’t Sara. It wasn’t just guesswork with men, they really did know what connected up to what and how and why. Knew that if you worked your hands up and down and around it just like…

“Oh God…” He couldn’t suppress that groan of pleasure. It had been so long and finally this was Daniel and Daniel was so surprisingly good.

Smiling, Daniel slithered down a little lower and began to lap up at his right nipple. O'Neill realized he was hunched over him uncomfortably while Daniel wriggled around enticingly underneath him. “Maybe we should…?”

“Good idea.” Daniel licked his hardening nipple with flickering motions of his tongue, like a hummingbird after nectar, darting a maddening glance up at him from under his eyelashes, then craned his neck to suck slowly on his right nipple, closing his eyes as he kissed the skin around the pink nub before sucking hard.

Hard all over, O'Neill pushed himself back onto his side of the bed, lying on his back, the duvet tangled around his legs, a cool breeze from the open window skimming across his superheated skin. He turned his head to look at Daniel, who was gazing at him with that same fascinated curiosity. As O'Neill watched him breathlessly, Daniel moved across to straddle him, bending his body in a slow curve so that he could lick O'Neill’s chest, while his fingers circled O'Neill’s cock and began a maddening rhythm of slippery stroking. 

O'Neill arched his back, closing his eyes as Daniel’s mouth and hands did deliciously naughty things to his erogenous zones. He’d always imagined their first time would involve lots of talking, and not just because Daniel was the talkative type. When someone had been abused as consistently as the man now so expertly handling his cock, he presumed they had things they didn’t like which they would need to tell you about. But Daniel was confidently and silently stroking down and around, then up with a firm wrist action that really hit O'Neill’s spot, his oil-slicked palms and fingers exerting just the right amount of pressure. He definitely didn’t seem interested in any kind of conversation right now. O'Neill couldn’t stifle another groan of pleasure, opening his eyes in time to catch that little smile from Daniel. 

Daniel began to kiss a path down O'Neill’s body, licking, sucking, with the occasional little nip that made O'Neill’s body jolt with delicious pulses of pleasure. And all the time his skilful fingers were stroking his cock to oozing readiness. When Daniel stopped working his cock and began to stroke his hips and thighs instead, massaging them gently, O'Neill groaned with the frustration of it, hungering for some wet warmth to soothe his aching hardness. He closed his eyes only to open them a second later in shock as he felt warm breath blowing gently on the wet tip.

“Daniel…?” he gasped.

Looking down his body he could see Daniel with his head bent over his erection, his mouth just opening to take him in.

Swallowing hard, O'Neill said, “Are you sure you want to…?”

Daniel flicked him one look from under his eyelashes and then closed his eyes like a child about to eat an ice cream and opened his mouth.

O'Neill jolted in helpless response as that skilful tongue licked across the tip, then an eager mouth closed over his cock as if they were old friends. 

His voice at least an octave higher than usual, O'Neill held up a finger. “You don’t have to… I mean, not unless you… Oh God… Don’t feel you… Jesus…!”

No one had ever used their teeth on him that hard before and the scraping friction was as unexpectedly intense as it was kinkily arousing. Daniel was massaging the inside of his thighs as he sucked him in a way that was sending spirals of radiating pleasure into his scrotum. 

With a hand across his eyes, body jolting in deliciously helpless response to Daniel’s unbelievably talented mouth and fingers, O'Neill decided to go with the ‘take me I’m yours’ option. Daniel was putting every ounce of his considerable powers of concentration into this blowjob and every erogenous zone O'Neill possessed wasn’t so much sitting up and taking notice as dancing a dark tango with his nervous system.

Abruptly Daniel closed his hands on O'Neill’s shins and pushed his knees up before beginning to suck him deeper and harder.

“You’re going to kill me…” O'Neill gasped. No one had ever given him a blowjob like this in his life, and up until this moment he would have said he’d been blown by the best. 

Daniel’s response was to keep doing what he was doing only more so. His fingers were managing an incredible massage of his thighs and hips, thumbs rubbing circling patterns from his pelvis towards his cock as if to channel more attention to the bundle of nerves wiring his cock to his prostate, before fingering the cock he held with the skill of a concert violinist. At the same time his tongue licked, caressed, tantalized and probed, then his mouth sucked hard and soft, alternating from gentle to rough so O'Neill’s body jangled wildly from one kind of pleasure to the next. 

Gripping O'Neill by the knees, Daniel began to rock his body gently in time to the rhythm of his mouth, pulling him in deep then shallow, deep then shallow. 

O'Neill realized he had passed the point of coherence minutes ago and had been groaning incoherent garbage for some time now, any second now he was also going to pass the point of no return. “I’m going to…”

Daniel sucked him harder, taking him in so deep that there was no escape for him, the building circles of pleasure reaching ground zero in an eruption that would have done credit to Vesuvius. He was sure he turned inside out and quite possibly upside down, orgasm exploded between his legs with such force he swore it sent a pleasure rocket to his brain. The moonlit room zig-zagged out of focus and then he was emptying himself into the hungry warmth of Daniel’s mouth.

It was at least a minute before O'Neill felt able to approach coherence. “That was…” He waved a hand helplessly. “I mean… just unbelievably…”

He looked up to find Daniel gazing down at him, a trickle of something white at the side of his mouth. O'Neill reached up and wiped it clean with his thumb then stroked his fingers through Daniel’s hair before pulling his mouth down close enough to for him to kiss. “Thank you.”

Daniel darted him a glance, half pleased with himself, half a little shy. “Was that okay?”

O'Neill swallowed. “Yes, that was ‘okay’. That was ‘okay’ like the Empire State Building is ‘quite tall’. That was…” He reached up and ran a hand through Daniel’s hair, gazing into his eyes and hoping that Daniel could read the truth in his. “That was mind-blowingly earth-shatteringly nerve-wowingly wonderful.”

Daniel smiled a little smugly. “Sarah taught me.”

“She’s good.” O'Neill flopped back on the pillow. “You must have cried for a week when you split up with her.”

“A month actually. She used to surprise me with performances like that all the time. Usually just before I had to give a lecture on something not very interesting. Did I remember it right?” 

O'Neill now had a very clear picture of what Daniel and Sarah’s sex-life must have been like. He imagined his hapless archaeologist being grabbed by the tie and dragged into the nearest broom closet so Sarah could yank down his jeans and give him something to scream about. It was kind of sweet that the only time Daniel managed to be take-charge and alpha was when he was mimicking the behavior of the last woman who’d jumped him, but he had no intention of sharing that thought with Daniel. Copying Sarah or not, Daniel had certainly managed to empower himself in the bedroom in a way O'Neill could only applaud. 

“Oh boy, yeah.” O'Neill grinned at him. “You clearly have perfect recall of more than hieroglyphs.”

Daniel flopped down supine on the bed next to him and O'Neill couldn’t disguise the hunger he felt as he looked at his body. Those broad shoulders, smooth chest, narrow waist and impossibly long legs would have been an enticing enough package by themselves, but when you added that beautiful face and that awakening cock and delicious balls, he became the epitome of irresistible. Looking at Daniel’s face to make sure this was okay, he slid his hand down his body, enjoying the little jolts of surprise Daniel gave as O'Neill’s hand smoothed its way across his skin.

It was a matter of seconds to roll on top of him and start to lick and touch. His competitive spirit had been awoken now and he wanted to make sure Daniel didn’t feel he was getting the worst of this bargain. He reached for the massage oil, poured a generous portion on to his palms, then began to smooth it into his skin. He was still very aware that Daniel had been abused, and he needed to know what was okay for him and what wasn’t. Carefully exploring every perfect inch of his body with tongue and fingers seemed like the perfect way to map this fascinating country and learn which places were off limits and others eager for contact with new visitors.

It became obvious in seconds that, however many times Tony might have fucked him over the years, foreplay had not been a high priority. As O'Neill gently explored his body, kissing, nibbling and touching, touching, touching, waiting for the flinch that would tell him something was unwelcome, Daniel kept jolting in confused pleasure like O'Neill was an electric eel.

“Okay…?” O'Neill nibbled behind his ear again and Daniel jumped convulsively.

“Fine…” he gasped.

O'Neill tilted his jaw round so they made eye contact. “Anything you don’t like, tell me.”

“I will.”

O'Neill moistened his lips. “I swear to god, Daniel, if you just lie there and think of Egypt…”

“I won’t.” Daniel darted a look at him, blue eyes looking huge in his disturbingly youthful face. “I promise, I won’t.”

O'Neill gazed into his eyes. “I’m not going to be offended. I’m not going to take it personally. I’m not expecting you to…” He stroked a hand down his body, enjoying the sensation of Daniel’s oil-softened skin under his fingers.

“I’m fine, Jack.” Daniel gave him a reassuring smile that was the sweetest thing O'Neill had ever seen. “Just…keep doing what you’re doing.”

“Okay.” O'Neill bent his head and got back to the serious task of mapping Daniel’s erogenous zones for future reference. He was incredibly responsive to touch, more so than anyone he’d ever met. Foreplay seemed to come as a pleasant shock to him and he was practically purring in minutes, body moving blindly in the direction of O'Neill’s, making soft sounds of disappointment when O'Neill stopped licking his nipple to move onto another area, and then purring again as that place was shown the pleasures of touch. 

It was impossible to be in bed with Daniel and not think about his previous partners, and not only what they’d done but hadn’t done. O'Neill pictured the woman Kawalsky had described, tall, slender, energetic, confident, brilliant, and could easily imagine her idea of a lead-up to sex was to give Daniel a solid shove onto the nearest bed before straddling him skillfully. He suspected that while Tony’s idea of foreplay had been to push a pillow into his mouth to keep him quiet, Sarah’s had probably been to sit on his face. Given Daniel’s habitual passivity and lack of initiative when it came to romance, that had probably been the best strategy to get them both from zero to orgasm as fast and frequently as possible. But it did mean Daniel was still endearingly clueless about the way he was wired up. A gentle nip at the point where his neck met his shoulder made him curl up deliciously, like an anemone, and having his nipples licked was something that seemed to reduce him to boneless jelly.

Daniel’s body arched in pleasure as O'Neill stroked his cock to hardness. Sarah Gardner’s blowjobs had evidently been world class, of course. O'Neill wasn’t sure he wanted to get into a competition with her right now. On the other hand, it seemed like good manners to do for Daniel what Daniel had just done so wonderfully for him. His skin tasted faintly of coffee and shower gel and it was nothing but a thrill to lick the inside of his thighs, especially when Daniel shivered with pleasure at each touch of O'Neill’s tongue. Daniel canted up his legs instinctively, back arching as O'Neill licked around his balls and kneaded his narrow hips, using his thumbs to channel sensation towards Daniel’s cock in the same way the man had done for him. Wondering how he’d react, O'Neill began to lick nearer and nearer to his opening. Daniel jolted and arched from each touch of his mouth, and as O'Neill gently eased back his ass cheeks and boldly thrust into his tongue into the velvety warmth, gasped, “Jack, what are you doing?”

O'Neill licked slyly around his balls. “Don’t you like it?”

Daniel was looking very wanton, sprawled naked on the creased tangle of sheets and duvet, head thrown back against the pillow, legs open, cock standing to attention.

“Yes, but…” 

That was all the encouragement O'Neill needed and he began to apply himself in earnest while Daniel squirmed and whimpered like a puppy being tickled. O'Neill had been told there was no quicker better way to get even the most tense and apprehensive body relaxed and eager, and this seemed to be the case with Daniel. It had certainly been the case with O'Neill all those years ago. These sensations were clearly like nothing Daniel had ever known before and he kept gasping in shock, an endearingly confused little sound, like a maiden aunt seeing her first strip club.

O'Neill held up Daniel’s leg as he concentrated on his work, taking the way Daniel was squirming and making moaning sounds as a very good sign. With his free hand he began to gently pump his cock, trying not to think of this as therapy, just as fun. As Daniel began to moan louder, he added more oil to his middle finger and very gently eased it into the opening he had loosened with his tongue. As Daniel jolted he found his prostate and began to massage it, rubbing his fingertip over the small gland.

“God, Jack…!” He looked up between Daniel’s legs and saw him gazing at him open-mouthed, eyebrows almost up to his hairline. 

He fucked you for seventeen years and never managed to hit your prostate? Where was he aiming, for crying out loud? 

Just one of the many things he would never be able to say aloud. 

“Okay?” O'Neill asked, continuing to massage him gently.

“What are you…? How did you…?”

“I’m not hurting you?”

“No!” Despite blinking at him in confusion, Daniel could hardly have been more emphatic.

O'Neill slid his finger out gently and applied his tongue again, loving the way Daniel immediately began to squirm helplessly, making incredible little whimpering sounds that were the sexiest and the sweetest thing he’d ever heard. He gave him a hand job as he licked him, and then slipped his finger back inside and tantalized his prostate while sucking on his cock. Daniel was now just incoherently mewling, slender body wriggling and jolting in ecstatic confusion. O'Neill grinned and sucked on his cock harder, working another finger in to join the first while Daniel ground his hips against his hand, back arching pleasurably. He looked so beautiful in the moonlight, wanton and out of control, sweat sheening his skin, legs canted up, cock aching with arousal and salt-sweet to taste. He eased his fingers out and slipped his tongue back inside, pumping his cock as he did so, rubbing his roughened thumb over the tip while Daniel’s moans became loud and uninhibited. He found his obvious surprise very touching. Daniel had clearly never had good sex with a guy before but he had still moved into this house and this bed because he wanted to be with O'Neill. Had wanted to have sex with him just because of who he was, not because he had expected to enjoy it that much. What had he been imagining anyway? A brief jolting of conjoined bodies followed by some compensatory cuddling? 

“Oh, Jack…” It was a surprised little gasp.

O'Neill lifted his head and began to suck on his cock again, easing his fingers back inside and finger-fucking him very gently in time with the rocking rhythm of Daniel’s so-responsive body.

“I’m going to…”

O'Neill sucked hard and drove his fingers into him almost roughly, Daniel bucked then, arched ecstatically and then filled his mouth with hot fluid. O'Neill swallowed and licked him clean while Daniel lay quivering on the bed from the aftershocks like a particularly beautiful beached jellyfish. He desperately wanted to kiss him and stroke his hair back from his face but remembering his own reaction to being rimmed for the first time – freak out city would probably have defined it best – decided he had better go and brush his teeth. With a last kiss between Daniel’s legs, he got up – not without a wince about his aching knees – and headed for the bathroom. 

When he came back out, Daniel was still lying on his back on the bed, gazing up at the ceiling as if he was on a carousel and the sky was spinning. Grinning at the sight of him, O'Neill climbed onto the bed and crawled up his body before planting a minty fresh kiss on his mouth. Daniel gazed at him with such unconcealed adoration, that O'Neill felt his breath catch and he gently stroked his uneven bangs off his forehead. “How are you doing?”

“Good.” Another smile. “Really…good.”

“You’re not…traumatized then?”

Daniel blinked. “Do I look traumatized?”

O'Neill looked at his starfish pattern limbs. “Kind of.”

Daniel craned his neck to kiss him on the mouth, carding his fingers through O'Neill’s head before pulling back to gaze at him again. O'Neill had no idea what Daniel was seeing when he looked at him like that, but he seemed to be something on a par with the pyramids, some eighth wonder of the world Daniel had discovered all by himself. He almost said ‘I’m just a cranky guy with bad knees, Danny…’ but decided to keep that information to himself for a little bit longer. It didn’t seem fair to shatter Daniel’s illusions. Not when his illusions were so very sweet.

“You also look beautiful.” O'Neill kissed him back, before reaching up to kiss his eyelids as Daniel obligingly closed his eyes, and then rub his face gently against Daniel’s, nibbling at his ear, before breathing deliberately on that hot spot he’d found just behind it that made Daniel squirm and shiver. He did it now, giggling and curling up, like a toddler being tickled. “You’re so sweet.” He thought he’d only said it in his mind, but the shocked look from Daniel told him he’d murmured it aloud.

“ ‘Sweet’?” Daniel looked comically aggrieved.

“Only when you’re post-orgasmic,” O'Neill assured him. “When you haven’t had caffeine you’re still scary as hell.”

“Good.” A pleased smile from Daniel who was nevertheless already looking drowsy. 

O'Neill realized Daniel must be one of those guys who needed to sleep as soon as he’d come. He reached for the duvet and untangled the sheet to cover them with the bedding. “We should get some shuteye,” he suggested.

“Okay.” Daniel’s eyes were already closing.

O'Neill slid down the bed into his usual spot and Daniel snuggled in against him, draping an arm across O'Neill’s chest. Somehow O'Neill had known Daniel would be a snuggler once his inhibitions were overcome.

“I can’t believe you put your tongue…there…” Daniel murmured drowsily.

“I can’t believe how good the oral sex is in the archaeology department.”

Daniel’s eyes were definitely closed now. “Well, it is all part of linguistics….” 

And then he was asleep and O'Neill could snatch a long deep breath. They were both sticky with sweat and semen – providing them with the perfect opportunity to shower together in the morning. He thought about soaping Daniel’s back and watching the suds trickle down that spine to rest in those two miraculous dimples just above that perfect butt. Closing his eyes quickly, he dismissed the image. Too much of that and he’d be hard again. He bent his head and kissed Daniel’s hair, inhaling the scent of it. He remembered what he’d said to Bratac about Daniel being saved and realized it was true. Not just an empty declaration to fate, but an actual bona fide accomplishment. He had rescued him from Tony without the use of pumpkins or glass slippers, and in a week or so they would be stepping through the Stargate together to walk on the surface of other worlds. Daniel was no longer a prisoner of anything except his own curiosity, and if O'Neill had taken lives in the past, this time at least he had definitely saved one, and in saving Daniel had recovered something of himself he had thought lost forever in the process. 

He kissed the top of his head again and then closed his eyes, welcoming sleep now where he had shunned it for so long, the last thing he heard as he drifted off, the regular rhythm of their breathing, the double beat of their hearts.

*** 

He was almost scared to admit it to himself, but Daniel realized he was not just happy but was happier than he had ever been. He still grieved for Nick, and Sha’re, thought of Farouk and Ivana’s boyfriend, the losses they were still living with, still had too many flashbacks a day to that final day, still woke in the darkness sometimes and listened for Tony’s footsteps, undecided if it was relief or sorrow he felt when he remembered he would never hear them again. 

But he loved Jack, loved their days together at Cheyenne Mountain and loved their nights together even more. Once Jack’s inhibitions had been overcome things had got very exciting very quickly. Daniel honestly believed they would both have been in an old folk’s home before Jack made any kind of move but once he’d given him the requisite push in the right direction, Jack had blown a lot more than his mind. He suspected it would be a long time before Jack was the one who made the first move and although he found it a little exasperating, he also loved him for it. Jack never initiated sex, although he would initiate the kind of kissing that inevitably led to sex, always took everything maddeningly slowly, constantly monitoring Daniel’s reactions for any hint of discomfort. And perhaps if Jack had been more aggressive or casual about their love life, there would have been some discomfort. However determined Daniel was not to have the shadow of Tony ruin any more of his life, there were moments in the bedroom when he thought of him. But there was simply no comparison between his sex life with Tony and his sex life with Jack. 

Tony’s foreplay had always been perfunctory at best, spit and the briefest scissoring of his fingers too often his idea of proper preparation. Jack seemed to know that and had assumed from the outset that any penetrative sex was out of the question, but for some reason Jack making that assumption had annoyed Daniel intensely and made him determined to overcome what he then perceived as Jack’s psychological hang-up. Not that Jack’s ideas for other ways they could have fun in the bedroom weren’t mind-blowing, but Jack’s incredible foreplay with fingers and tongue had made him aware that there were other ways to prepare a guy for sex than the ones Tony had chosen, and had awoken erogenous zones he hadn’t known he possessed. It had taken weeks to get Jack to stop treating him as if he was made of glass but even from the beginning the man had turned out to be incredible in bed: selfless, wickedly inventive, tender, and tireless. He still needed constant reassurances that Daniel wasn’t some poor little abuse victim who couldn’t take it like a man and Daniel had been forced to be a lot more proactive than he was used to being in the bedroom. There were a few times when he’d found himself rolling his eyes and thinking that Sarah had never needed the instruction manual Jack apparently did, but once he’d managed to convince Jack that he really wasn’t permanently traumatized and really did want Jack to put his cock right there, and how, the nights had become something he eagerly anticipated. 

He also loved his work at the SGC and was counting the days until they actually got to step through the Stargate. Every day he was in demand to brief the other teams being put together on the culture and language of the Ancient Egyptians, and he was combining preparing their presentations with his own research. Before the wormhole had disengaged itself – after thirty-eight minutes – the ‘MALP’ had sent them some fascinating images from what seemed to be the inside of an Ancient Egyptian structure. He could read the hieroglyphs without too much trouble. Some of the glyphs were unfamiliar but he could guess his way through them because of the context and when he checked over his scribbled translations could usually find confirmation from the context of other panels that he had guessed right. 

He spent his days in a contented daze of new texts to translate and briefings to prepare. After his initial nervousness, he had found the briefings were actually quite enjoyable. It had been a few years since he’d had to give a lecture and although he had always found it a somewhat nerve-wracking experience he’d forgotten that it was also a real pleasure to have an opportunity to share knowledge with others, to see them understand things they hadn’t understood before, their enthusiasm awoken by his. 

The first few times Jack had come in with him and stood in the back glowering at people who didn’t appear to be paying attention, but now he just let Daniel get on with it. Daniel had found the designated ‘anthropologist’ assigned to each team wasn’t always an anthropologist at all, but a soldier who had a facility for languages or who had studied the humanities. Apparently, getting hold of anthropologists with the right security clearance was no easy task and the Pentagon was on a go-slow on that recruitment until it found how many teams it lost on the wrong side of the wormhole in the first month. It wasn’t unusual for him to find himself with some Air Force lieutenant to brief on Ancient Egyptian who had been designated the first contact liaison on the team because he could speak Russian or had taken a foundation course in something vaguely related to archaeology. Daniel didn’t care. He liked a challenge and this was certainly that. After a few days of scratching his head and pleading with Hammond to arrange for more anthropologists to be brought onto the project, he’d decided on a different approach. It had taken him a few false starts but he had now designed and written what he mentally called the Amateur Anthropologists' Stargate Survival Course.

He started with an explanation of the carbon dating of the Stargate and the artifacts found near it or in the tomb he and Sarah had excavated, and the possible timeline this gave them for when the Stargate could have been in use in the past. As it was theoretically possible for people from earth to have traveled through it of their own volition during this period, or to have been taken from it by the alien culture which was using the Stargate at that time and seemed to be presenting themselves as ‘sun gods’, they had to assume this could have taken place, and the evidence from the MALP seemed to suggest that this was more than just a possibility. He then drew a timeline on the blackboard of which cultures were up and running up to the date when the Stargate seemed to have been buried. 

“If we take 5000 BCE as our starting point…”

“Excuse me, Doctor Jackson…?”

Daniel smiled to himself today because if someone was about to ask the question he thought they were going to ask then it showed they had at least read the mission briefing and possibly done some research of their own, always a good sign. Turning around from the whiteboard he assumed a carefully blank expression. “Yes…?” He peered at the lapel of the one with his hand up. “Lieutenant Nyan.”

“It says here that the carbon dating of the Stargate places it at least ten thousand BC and possibly older.”

Daniel nodded. “Yes, and I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that even though radiocarbon and potassium-argon dating both have their detractors and their inconsistencies, we can be sure the Stargate could not possibly have been constructed by any civilization living on this world at that time. To put it in context for you, what is currently believed to be the earliest ancestor of the human race – the meat-eating upright-walking Australopithecus – dates from around 2.5 million years ago, and we think that there were Homo sapiens – people like us in size, shape and brain size – inhabiting the planet from possibly as early as 160,000 years BCE. There is also Neanderthal Man – it would be a wonderful thing to discover that some of the Neanderthals were preserved elsewhere and to see what kind of people have evolved from them in the intervening years. However, there is no evidence of any race of hominids on this planet having had a written language or something we could truly call a culture until around 5,000 BCE. So, even if the ring was made in 10,000 BCE, there were, as far as we know, no indigenous Earth peoples with a language or culture of which we have a record who could have been using it. If there were people here from Atlantis back then I can’t help you because I don’t know what their language was, and if there were alien people using it in a different solar system I can’t help you there either as I don’t have access to any written records of their culture or language. But there are a number of early civilizations which were extant at the time in which we know the Stargate was in use of which we have a written record and with which I can help you.”

Nyan nodded intelligently. “What about…cavemen, sir? If they were taken through the Stargate a long time ago and haven’t evolved or we come across people who are still at that stage of development, how do we interact with them?”

Daniel tried not to flinch when people called him ‘sir’, it was one of the many things about working for the military that he was trying to get used to. “Good question. We’re going to spend a day on body language and basic communication skills, ways of showing that you’re not threatening, that you want to trade, that you’re not intending to hunt on their land or kidnap their womenfolk. But before then I want to go through the civilizations that had evolved in the Middle and Far East and Western Mediterranean at the time…”

He had to force himself not to make a long digression into the Chinese culture at this point, and to explain that although it was a very evolved civilization in the correct timeline and trade routes had certainly been open, until they saw some evidence of Chinese writing on some structure through the Stargate they were going to assume that the cultures they encountered were more likely to be from the areas already indicated.

Another raised hand. “Doctor Jackson, for what purpose do you think people were taken through the Stargate by the visiting…aliens?” 

Everyone had a problem with the word ‘aliens’. They all winced apologetically when they said it, Daniel included. Daniel knew if Jack had been in the room he would be glaring at the ones asking questions, but he’d always liked lectures to be interactive, an exchange of ideas, not just him standing in front of a whiteboard pontificating. 

“I’ve no idea, but if I had to make a guess I’d say it could be for the same reason that we collect animals from the wild – partly curiosity and partly conservation. There’s a lot of evidence to suggest early man was always tribal and combative. Remains found in Olorgesailie in southwest Kenya show evidence of a successful raid by a tribe of Homo erectus against a tribe of giant baboons of a race that are now extinct. In one night they killed more than fifty adult animals and a dozen young, presumably because they were warring over territory and food. From an anthropological perspective, these finds are fascinating for what they tell us about Homo erectus. They reveal evidence of tool use in the way the rocks used in the attack were chipped and shaped, and as those rocks don’t occur naturally in that area and must have been found some twenty miles from the area where the raid took place, show strong evidence that the raid was premeditated. Given the size and ferocity of even the smaller baboons on our world today, it also suggests a considerable level of team cooperation to have brought about such a successful outcome. Successful for Homo erectus, that is. From the viewpoint of the baboons it wasn’t a very good day.”

Nyen nodded intently. “So, you think these alien visitors may have seen the patterns of extinction amongst hominid and ape-like species on our world and wanted to preserve representatives of them before they died out?”

“Well, it’s possible. We can’t really make assumptions about an entirely different species based on our own characteristics.” Daniel really hoped that it was a benevolent culture they were dealing with and intended to think of them that way until proven otherwise but he knew Jack and Teal’c had a very different opinion. “But even if we use our own characteristics as a starting point, we could assume their motives were either benevolent or selfish and find evidence for both. We have transplanted indigenous species because they were endangered in the wild or their habitat was being encroached upon by natural or manmade problems. We have also transplanted our fellow human beings for motives that were nothing other than selfish and immoral.”

Realizing that he had now spent twenty minutes of their allotted time not really teaching them anything, and that a discussion on the economic and religious reasons that had brought about a state of mind in which the slave trade could be deemed acceptable to supposedly ‘civilized’ people would take the rest of the day, Daniel hastily turned back to the whiteboard. He began to sketch the cultural map of the Middle and Near East in the days of the earliest Mesopotamian cities. “The only evidence we have of what might lie on the other side of the Stargate comes from the writings on the cover stones found with the Stargate itself, in the tomb writing discovered by Doctor Sarah Gardner and myself, and in the writings sent back to us through the MALP from the one world for which we have a Stargate address. As all those writings were in a variant of Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs we’re taking as a starting point the date of 5,000 BC….”

From there he took them on a whirlwind classroom tour of ancient civilizations of the Ancient Middle and Near East, and Western Mediterranean, and showed them the different writings for each culture. They did a module on each culture and language and by the end of the course they had a grounding in the main branches of cuneiform, pictographs, Egyptian hieroglyphs, Hebrew, Demotic, Greek, Canaanite, Phoenician, and Aramaic, could write a few basic words in several different alphabets, and say a few words that would hopefully be recognizable to people who had evolved from those cultures.

He was flying blind, of course, but they did seem to appreciate that, and his willingness to admit that he didn’t really know anything yet but could tell them more after SG-1 had been through the Stargate and come back again – supposing they came back, of course. He always smiled when he said that because although, of course, there were no guarantees, he didn’t see himself dying any time soon. He was going to do his best to communicate with anyone they encountered and he had always believed that if you kept the lines of communication open, bloodshed was unlikely to follow. And, if bloodshed should become unavoidable, he didn’t think there were many enemies out there that would be better warriors than Jack, Sam, and Teal’c. As far as locating point of origins and gathering ‘gate addresses went, he considered that his responsibility, and he certainly had every intention of doing his damnedest to get the others and himself home again. Something else the would-be anthropologists appreciated was the fact he was going through first, that he wasn’t expecting them to deal with anything he wasn’t willing to face himself, and that, he suspected was probably the factor that made the biggest difference in the way they treated him.

Not being – for the most part – bona fide anthropologist or archaeologists, his military students weren’t generally interested in discussions about hypotheticals in the same way that someone who was learning to drive a car wasn’t interested in talking about the scenery while negotiating a freeway exit. But after his initial disappointment about their lack of interest in talking around the subject, he had focused on getting them confident so they could step through the Stargate and know they had at least an even chance of being able to communicate with any people they might encounter there. He had also prepared packs for them with photographic examples of the information they had from the tomb and the cover stones with a translation in ordinary hieroglyphs, cuneiform and English written next to it, a picture of the Stargate they could show to any indigenous people they encountered in case they got lost, and the Stargate address for Earth with a reminder of what they needed to look for to find the point of origin. He had also included various photographs of ancient texts in Ugaritic, Sumerian, Akkadian, and Ancient Egyptian, with a translation written phonetically so they could pronounce what was written there (he had explained that he was having to guess with the Ancient Egyptian as no one really knew exactly how it was pronounced but this was a fair approximation) and hopefully get some kind of dialogue going with the local population. 

Given that no one in Egypt now spoke the Ancient Egyptian of the predynastic and Early Dynastic Egypt he knew any people who had traveled through the Stargate might well have evolved different variants of language too, but perhaps if they had gone to a place where there was only their own culture and no outside influences it might have remained unchanged even for all these centuries. Again, he had no idea. 

He didn’t know if what he was giving them was helpful or not and was impatient to head through the Stargate so he could find out for himself what was really needed on these missions. But he did know that they looked a lot more confident after they’d completed his course than when they began it. Another positive aspect was that he would find himself walking through the corridors of this emphatically military installation and pass marines in the corner testing one another on their pronunciation of Akkadian or asking him again if Sumerian script should be read from left to right or right to left, and he did get a huge buzz from that. He didn’t see how you could engage with another culture’s language and history and not have at least a little more of a sense of fellow feeling with them, didn’t see how you could speak another man’s language and not draw a step closer to understanding. All those years and he’d never learned to speak Tony’s language, never really known what made him tick. It had put a terrible dent in his self-confidence as a communicator, which these lessons were helping to mend. Perhaps he had never managed to get through to a man addicted to methamphetamines on a murder spree to millions but he could get through to Airmen and marines who had never shown any interest in ancient civilizations before and infect them with at least some of his enthusiasm.

He knew he shouldn’t need praise at his age but he couldn’t help lighting up in surprise and pleasure every time Hammond sought him out to tell him what a good job he was doing and how much he appreciated the care and thought Daniel was putting into his course work. Contact with Hammond had taught him how it was that military men got into that state of mind where they were willing to walk into a hail of bullets just because their CO had told them to. There was something about Hammond that filled him with confidence and simultaneously made him want to make the man proud, and when the man called him ‘son’, which he did from time to time, it was all he could do not to purr like a stroked cat.

 

“Time to go home.”

Daniel looked up in surprise as Jack came into his office with that determined look on his face which said he wouldn’t be taking ‘in a minute’ for an answer. Surely it couldn’t be an hour since he’d finished the last presentation? He’d only intended to spend five minutes refining the translation from the far wall of the tomb… Seven o’clock. He winced as he saw where the hands of the clock were. He’d told Jack he’d meet him in the commissary in ten minutes nearly two hours ago.

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay.” Jack shut the door and leaned against it. “Luckily for you, I’m still at the stage in our relationship where I find your inability to tell the time cute and endearing.”

Daniel scribbled the last sentence of his translation onto a piece of paper before he forgot it, put a marker in the book he was using, and then gave Jack his most winsome smile. “Patience is such an attractive trait, I’ve always thought. Really…sexy.”

Jack smiled and elbowed himself off the door. “How sexy?”

“Very sexy.” Daniel closed his other book before he was tempted to start cross-referencing. “As in thirty seconds through the front door level sexy.”

Jack strolled over to him. “Not ‘let’s do the show right here’ level sexy?”

As Jack came close enough to really scent, to feel the warmth of his long lean body in those gray-green pants, to see the sinews on his arms beneath that black t-shirt, Daniel felt a little dry-throated. “That too.”

Jack bent and kissed him, a tantalizing come-on of a kiss, hot and slow and deep and…thorough, that left his tastebuds tingling with the last cup of coffee Jack had drunk. When the tongue was withdrawn from his mouth, Daniel found he was leaning forward blindly trying to recapture it, pants abruptly two sizes too small. He opened his eyes and blinked dazedly up at Jack. Swallowing hard, he managed: “I see you haven’t eaten.”

Jack didn’t even attempt not to look smug. “Want to come home now or are you too busy playing with your chicken scratchings?”

Daniel got to his feet so fast he almost knocked over his chair. “Now would be fine.”

Pausing with his hand on the door, Jack said, “You do love me for my mind, right?”

“Absolutely.” Daniel moistened his lips. “Amongst…other things.”

Jack gazed right into his eyes, maneuvering Daniel around so his back was against the door and Jack was breathing on his mouth. “Such as…?”

Daniel found he was looking at Jack’s mouth, half-hypnotized, he was also very aware of his groin, so close to his own. He wondered if anyone had ever rubbed up against a serving officer of the USAF in Cheyenne Mountain before. 

“You love me for…?”

It was an effort not to croak. “Your cooking.”

“I can’t cook.”

“Your singing.”

“I can’t sing either.”

“Your passion for science.”

Jack ran his fingers through Daniel’s hair. “I’m not sure you’re telling me the truth.”

Daniel swallowed. “Busted. It is your body. And your…” 

Jack simultaneously slipped his tongue into his mouth and slid a hand under Daniel’s T-shirt. Daniel made a faint whimpering sound as a thumb brushed his hardening nipple while a tongue thoroughly explored his mouth. Jack’s warm hand slid southwards, down his chest, across his stomach, down his navel in a straight line to…

“Oh God…”

“ ‘Jack’ will do.”

The warmth of Jack’s hand cupped around his groin, a slow rub, and then a hand to the back of his head, pulling him forward into another breath-stealing kiss….

Two minutes later, Daniel staggered out of his office, flushed, aroused, and desperate to get home, with Jack strolling along behind him smiling smugly. Jack managed small talk with Siler in the elevator going up but Daniel had to think hard about garbage trucks to keep himself under control.

Once in the jeep, Jack drove while Daniel sat back in the passenger seat, wriggling around in some discomfort while Jack mercilessly talked dirty to him without ever taking his eyes off the road.

Daniel practically dragged Jack through the front door then pulled the drapes in the living room before beginning to tear off his clothes. Jack watched him undress for a few seconds before swooping in for a passionate and tender kiss, Daniel’s face cradled in his hands as if it were something precious, his mouth explored thoroughly and deliciously. Then Daniel was tugging at both their clothes and they ended up in a heap naked amongst the cushions, kissing and grinding their bodies together, Daniel fumbling for the lube that had slipped down into the springs of the couch, slicking it onto his palm and stroking it across both of their erections then finding a rhythm of aching cock gliding against aching cock.

Jack kept kissing him, hands in his hair, gazing into his eyes each time he snatched another breath, tongue exploring his mouth thoroughly, while his hips worked of their own volition, driving his cock against Daniel’s in slow skilful thrusts. 

Daniel groaned with pleasure, knowing he couldn’t hold on much longer. As Jack deepened his kiss still further and drove his cock up along the hyper-sensitized length of Daniel’s, orgasm came, too fast, the pleasure a starburst in his groin and brain, and he moaned as he emptied himself all over Jack’s belly and loins. Gasping for breath as Jack kissed him through his climax, he kissed the man back, opening his eyes to see the desire and tenderness in those brown depths. He stroked a hand through Jack’s hair, seeing the silver starting to come through the darker strands, sucked the man’s tongue into his mouth again and then reluctantly let it slip from his lips before giving Jack a look that he hoped made clear what he wanted the man’s next move to be. Then he wriggled over onto his front and pulled his legs underneath himself.

At once Jack was kissing behind his ear and tenderly biting a path down his neck to the place where it met his shoulder. A finger, slicked with come and lube gently brushed against Daniel’s entrance and Daniel arched his back invitingly, Jack was kissing a path down his spine now, licking and nipping, while his finger slipped inside. As Jack craned his neck to bite gently at Daniel’s ribs, a second finger was added to the first and Daniel closed his eyes in anticipation. This had nothing to do with wanting to come, it was just something he enjoyed, as unlike sex with Tony as summer was like winter, Jack’s skilful actions bearing no resemblance to the selfish thrusting he had endured for so many years with Tony. He had never known anything quite as empowering as taking Jack from control to moaning oblivion just with the flexing of his mouth or body. Three fingers and a harder bite to distract him as he was stretched, then a tongue gently licking away any sting. He twisted round to look and could see the narrow length of Jack’s endless legs. Jack craned his neck so that they could kiss, fingers furrowing through Daniel’s hair, until they breathlessly parted. That whispered: “Okay…?” Jack still hadn’t quite learned to dispense with.

Daniel didn’t roll his eyes, because he had been with someone who didn’t act like Jack and he certainly knew which he preferred, but he did sigh. “Yes.”

And then finally Jack was sliding inside him. Daniel groaned in his chest and bowed his head. Jack ran his hand up Daniel’s spine with the first slow thrust, up the back of his neck, then up through his hair, rubbing it the wrong way like cat fur. Another agonizingly slow pull back before the next thrust, a brush across his prostate and Daniel felt a twinge of pleasure dart into his cock. He was going to be hard again by the time Jack had finished. If Jack came first, he’d go down on Daniel so deep afterwards that he would come screaming and they would be shaking with the aftermath as they staggered to the shower. They would emerge from the deluge of soap, water, and too much touching, so ravenous they would have to pace the room as they waited for the pizza to be delivered. Then they would lie on the couch together with their limbs intertwined and watch whatever happened to pass before their eyes on the TV set until they went to bed and kissed and touched again in the dark warmth of their bedroom….

He put his head back and Jack thrust again, still slow but deep, another moan of pleasure from both of them, and Daniel twisted his head round so they could steal another kiss. As he thrust again, Jack cradled Daniel’s face gently in his fingers, gazing into his eyes intently.

“What are you looking for…?” Daniel gasped breathlessly.

Jack thrust again, still slow, still deep, he could go on like this for a long time, one of the benefits of age, he said, and experience. At his age you didn’t have the recovery time of some twenty something, but to compensate you made much better use of every erection you had.

“My reflection.” Jack was still looking into his eyes as if hypnotized. “I need to see myself in your eyes.” He kissed him again, hungry and hard and Daniel felt himself spasm in response, his own desire beginning to spike higher and higher as he opened his mouth wider.

“Can you see yourself?” he managed as they pulled back.

Jack thrust again, a perfect hit on his prostate and Daniel shivered with pleasure, unmistakably hard again now. 

“Someone who looks like me. Only better.”

“That’s the real you.” Daniel groaned as another thrust hit his prostate, digging his fingers into the arm of the couch. He felt animal, empowered, sweaty, naked and unfettered, and Jack seemed to pick up on his change of mood, increasing the speed of the next thrust. “Oh God, yes…”

Jack thrust again and, as his mouth brushed Daniel’s shoulder, breathed, “You make me want to be who you think I am.”

Another bulls-eye on his prostate left Daniel gasping, the thrusts coming faster and harder now, ripples of pleasure beginning to build through both of them in unison. But for all the clamor of his body trying to get his attention, nerves and erogenous zones and the spasm after spasm from his prostate, Jack’s words still echoed in his mind, and he realized they were the declaration he’d never expected to hear, that this wasn’t just for now, but for the long haul. 

“You too, Jack,” he said breathlessly. “You too….”

And then Jack thrust and shuddered, his fingers tightening on Daniel’s hips, and at the feel of the man gasp then fill him with hot fluid, Daniel came too, another perfect climax to end another perfect day.

 

***

When he’d needed to hear her voice, he deliberately hadn’t called her. It was only now, when he had made a life for himself without her, that O'Neill felt able to call Sara and give her his new address. He still had a picture of her by his bed, something that Daniel insisted didn’t bother him, but she was no longer the person sharing his bed.

“So…how are you…?” Her voice was soft, a hint of guilt there. He could picture in her mind, the softness in her expression, the sunlight on her hair. Like thinking of a family member, someone he knew as well as himself. So familiar, so difficult to give up. He wondered if there was a way to keep your wife as your sister once the passion had died.

“Okay.” He was and tried to sound it, not sure though how that sounded when you were actually wanting to project it. “You?”

“Fine. I saw Kawalsky and Christine last night.”

“How are they doing?”

“Fine. I think he misses you but he said the new partner is shaping up okay.”

“That’s…”

“Jack…?”

Daniel’s voice. O'Neill rolled his eyes, murmured ‘Excuse me’ into the phone and yelled back, “What?”

“Where are the cookies?”

“Hidden.”

“Why?” Daniel appeared in the doorway looking plaintive.

“Because you need to eat breakfast.”

“Why don’t they count as breakfast?”

“Toast or cereal.” O'Neill gave him his sternest look. “Or you can boil yourself some eggs. Or I’ll take you to the nearest diner and buy you a cooked breakfast, but you’re not eating cookies all day and then saying you’re not hungry when it’s lunchtime.”

“Are you on the phone?”

O'Neill held it up with a glare of exasperation. “What does it look like?”

Daniel winced and held up a hand in apology. “Sorry.” He backed out of the door on tiptoe despite his bare feet making no noise on the carpet anyway.

O'Neill returned to the receiver. “Sorry.”

Sara sounded as if she was trying to suppress laughter. “Is that Daniel?”

“Yes. He’s the absent-minded professor type. All brains, no sense.”

“Kawalsky said he was a ‘sweet kid’. He said you rescued him.”

O'Neill scratched his jaw. “Nah, he followed me home.” There was a pause and then he sighed. “Actually, I think he rescued me.” Another pause. “It’s bothering me a little that you’re not acting more surprised. You didn’t get some lightbulb over your head when Kawalsky told you about Daniel and think ‘oh well that explains a lot’ did you?” He couldn’t bring himself to say what he was thinking – which was that he’d always thought their sex life was pretty darned sizzling until the Black Ops guilt had started to get to him. 

She laughed. “No, Jack. I just knew because you told me that you…”

“Batted for both teams?”

“It’s never bothered me except that it used to give me twice the number of people to be jealous of at parties.”

“You were jealous of guys? I never looked at a guy when I was married to you!”

“I spent years hating you being around Bobby Culver, didn’t you ever notice?”

“I thought it was April Culver you were jealous of?”

“Are you kidding? April wasn’t your type but Bobby was one of those skinny blond pretty boys with big eyes and long legs who used to follow you around and ask about your time in the services like you were Dan Dare. He must have poured himself into those damned jeans. I always wanted to shove him and his perky butt into the swimming pool with some rocks in his pockets. What does Daniel look like?”

“Um…” O'Neill mentally measured Daniel against Bobby Culver and realized that apart from being younger, prettier, and having an even perkier butt Daniel wasn’t unlike him. “Well…”

Sara sighed. “I knew it. Still, as long as he’s nice to you.”

“He’s very nice to me.” O'Neill realized it was true as he said it. “I mean he ignores me, and takes me for granted, and scares me half to death, and thinks I’m half man half coffee dispenser, but apart from that he’s very nice to me indeed.”

“Do you love him?” 

There was a silence in which O'Neill had to swallow hard. “Yes,” he said faintly. “Oh God, Sara, yes, I do, so much.”

“That’s a good thing, Jack.”

“But I’m scared. I can’t go through this again. I can’t…” He blurted it out before he could stop himself, needed to tell someone yet not even knowing it until this moment. But what if he lost him on the other side of the Stargate? What if some harm befell him? He had already buried half of his heart in Charlie’s grave. He couldn’t go through that again.

“Yes, you can.” Her voice was very gentle. “Jack, you crawled across a burning desert with two broken legs. You can let someone into your life and not run away screaming.”

Another long silence in which he looked at her picture while the tears came into his eyes. “I’m sorry I wasn’t a better husband to you.”

“You were the best husband in the world to me during the time when we were meant to be together. We just stuck it out a few years too long. I miss your friendship though. I’d like to keep that if I can.”

“You’ve got it.” He wiped his eyes hastily, very glad he was alone. “You have a bad date – you call me and tell me how much men suck and how the world would be so much a better place if we were all replaced with frozen sperm. That’s what ex-husbands are for.”

“Can you tell me how to pick up men?”

“Yes. Always bend your knees when lifting or you’ll get a hernia.”

He’d forgotten what her laugh sounded like, it was so long since he’d heard it. “I’m like man repellent at the moment. They hear you’re getting a divorce and they’re all over you but when they find out about Charlie….”

A long silence in which he remembered the good times and that last horrible day. “No one as great as you is not going to get snapped up. You just have to meet the right guy.”

“Are you moonlighting as 'Dear Abby'?”

“Do you mind? I do big serious important things for the government these days.”

“Is there a gap in your big serious important schedule for me to meet Daniel?”

O'Neill gaped. “Um…I don’t know. He’s not too good about meeting new people. His upbringing was a little strange.”

“I heard. Kawalsky said his evil uncle locked him up in a tower with bars on the windows, and you had to rescue him by buying him a pair of shoes with laces. Of course, he was a little drunk at the time. Daniel doesn’t turn into a pumpkin at midnight, does he?”

“No, only into someone very scary if he’s denied caffeine….”

 

When he finally replaced the receiver he was astonished to find that an hour had gone by and they had chatted about everything from their first meeting to Charlie’s first steps. They had actually laughed and cried together in a way they hadn’t been able to do for far too many years.

As he walked into the kitchen he found Daniel still eating a bowl of cereal while reading a book about Ancient Goddesses. The paper was left at O'Neill’s end of the table and hadn’t been unfolded yet. O'Neill quickly fetched some cereal for himself, realizing as he did so that he didn’t like cereal any more than Daniel did but was now going to have to eat it to set a good example. As he poured himself some coffee, Daniel said, “Was that your wife?”

“Ex-wife.” O'Neill stressed the ‘ex’. “She wants to meet you.”

“What?” Daniel looked up in shock. “Why?”

“Because I’m important to her and you’re important to me.”

Daniel stared at him blankly, mouth still open, eyes confused. “I thought maybe you and her were…”

“Sara and I are as over as it’s possible for two people to be, Daniel. The only reason we can talk to each other again is because we’ve both moved on.”

“I just want you to be happy.” Daniel winced. “Only, obviously, expressed in a way a lot less sappy than that. What I mean is… I think you deserve to have a nice life and… Well, basically…”

O'Neill interrupted gently, “I know what you mean, and I feel the same way, but, unlike you, I’m a selfish bastard, so if a nicer option than me comes along looking for you I’m just going to direct her or him to the taco bar down the street and keep you for myself. Okay?”

The smile that spread over Daniel’s face was truly beautiful to behold. Then he lowered his eyes in embarrassment, a definite flush of color on his cheek. “Okay. And…ditto.”

Grinning, O'Neill got to his feet and tossed the paper onto the table. “Okay, as we have now established that we’re both going to put our own selfish needs over what’s best for the one we love, and screw that self-sacrificing crap, let’s go out and get some breakfast that doesn’t taste like rabbit food.”

Daniel also got to his feet, still smiling and looking absurdly young but somehow more comfortable in his own skin than he had done even a moment before. “Done.”

As they went out to the car, O'Neill put an arm around his shoulders and kissed him gently on the tip of his perfectly formed ear. “If I buy you waffles can I get some extra maple syrup to go…?”

The look Daniel gave him as they got into the car implied that he had no objection to that suggestion whatsoever.

***

The Stargate. A shimmer of blue inviting them to take their first steps on an alien world. O'Neill looked at Carter first, at how she was lit up, eyes fixed on the event horizon as if it was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen in her life. She was in love, he could tell, not so much with what lay beyond the Stargate, as with the Stargate itself, and all its component parts: the wormhole and the way it worked, the Stargate system that might connect world after world through its naquada-enhanced corridors of swirling blue impossibility. She wanted to know everything about how it worked and why. Then he looked at Daniel, who was also lit up like Christmas Eve, gazing up into the event horizon in wonder, the blue light illuminating his skin and eyes, face full of curiosity and excitement. He wanted to know what lay beyond, what people, how they had come to be there, what choices they’d made. If they’d come from Earth, how they had deviated from the ones left behind, if alien in origin, how like and unalike their own societies they were. For Daniel there could never be too many worlds. Never be too many possibilities.

As they walked towards the ramp, O'Neill was very aware of Teal’c. The man looked no less imposing in his BDU's, tall, muscular, utterly composed. Whatever awaited them on the other side of the wormhole, O'Neill doubted it would take Teal’c by surprise. The man had that inbuilt radar all true warriors had, aware of the flanks of their unit, aware of who needed to be protected and from which direction. Teal’c’s straight backed grace as he walked towards the ‘gate was also full of awareness of where exactly Daniel was, where exactly Carter was. If enemy fire were directed against them, Teal’c would be there in an instant to block it and return it.

He looked over at Teal’c now and their eyes briefly met, an acknowledgement that if the other two were excited and curious, they were prepared for the worst. One way or another, Teal’c’s expression told him, they were all getting home. O'Neill nodded his head briefly to let the man know they could not have been more on the same page, and Teal’c nodded back.

O'Neill touched Daniel gently on the shoulder. “Okay?”

The smile Daniel gave him could have lit up an aircraft hanger. It would have seemed as absurd to ask this curious, excited, and undoubtedly happy young man if he needed a sedative, as if was to ask Teal’c. “Fine. You?”

“Great.” O'Neill grinned back. “Nothing I like better than leaping into the unknown with no sure way home.”

“I’ll find the point of origin,” Daniel told him with a confidence that O'Neill didn’t think was misplaced. He didn’t know if he even cared if it was. He was taking his life with him. Its name was Daniel Jackson. As long as they were both together, wherever they were, they were already home.

Hammond said gently, “SG-1, you have a go.”

Carter and Daniel smiled over their shoulders at the general. 

“God speed,” the man added.

O'Neill gave him a brief nod of acknowledgement. “Thank you, sir.” 

Then they walked along the ramp together and, with a last grin exchanged between Daniel and Carter, stepped into the beautiful blue unknown.

##### The End


End file.
